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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 

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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 































ADDRESSES 



Henry Drummond, F. R.S.E., F.G.S. 


THE GREATEST THING IN THE WORLD 
PAX VOBISCUM 

The Changed life 

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PHILADELPHIA 
HENRY ALTEMUS 
1891 




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By HENRY ALTEMUS 
1891 


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INTRODUCTORY. 


^pHE name of Professor Henry Drum¬ 
mond is fast getting to be a house¬ 
hold word in America, as it has been in 
Great Britain. He justly ranks among 
the first of scholars and thinkers. 

Quite recently he has electrified the 
English-speaking, and, indeed, all Chris¬ 
tian peoples, by a series of original and 
brilliant discourses upon Bible themes. 
In these he uses the most familiar texts 
with the most astonishing results. 

The most learned men find in his dis¬ 
courses a force of thought, a beauty of 



4 


INTRODUCTORY. 


speech, and a sublimity of sentiment that 
draw the warmest praises. But the chief 
merit of his addresses lies in the fact that 
they are so happily adapted to every-day 
uses. Without passing as sermons, they 
are jewels of truth, reservoirs of enlight¬ 
enment, springs of encouragement and 
comfort for the thirsty. Every thought 
and word is on a level with the com¬ 
monest understanding. No heart can re¬ 
main untouched by their pathos, energy, 
and appeals to duty. No phase of charac¬ 
ter can escape the refining influence of 
their analogies, illustrations, analyses, and 
exhortations. 

His Greatest Thing in the World is a 
revelation to every reader. Its simplicity, 
beauty, earnestness, and reverence com¬ 
mend it as a wonderful production—the 



INTRODUCTORY. 


5 


masterpiece of a genius that every one 
should know. His Pax Vobiscum (“ Peace 
be with you”) is a work whose originality 
and power throw about it an especial 
charm. It is a most inspiriting series of 
thoughts on the art of cultivating and ob¬ 
taining Christian life, and will be wel¬ 
comed and appreciated in every home. 
The Changed Life is the planting and 
growing of Christian character—a happily 
conceived, strong, and sterling work, full 
of mighty thoughts, striking interpreta¬ 
tions, and forcible illustrations. The style 
is irresistible, and no reader can scan its 
glowing pages without feeling refreshed 
from contact with masterly worded truth. 
His First was originally an address to the 
“Boys’ Brigade” of Glasgow, but is now 
addressed to the “Boys of America.” It 



6 


INTRODUCTORY. 


is in Professor Drummond’s very best 
vein, and is unique, forcible, and beauti¬ 
ful. It cannot but prove an inspiration 
to every boy, and must furnish a model to 
every teacher, for there is nothing in the 
language that conveys so many lessons in 
the same impressive way. 

For the first time these works of Pro¬ 
fessor Drummond are grouped and pub¬ 
lished in a single volume, with the con¬ 
fidence that their merits will command 
millions of readers and prove a source of 
untold blessings. As a Christian people 
we need just such originality and energy 
of thought, and as a busy people we re¬ 
quire what we read to be in convenient 
and economic form. 



THE GREATEST THING 

IN 


THE WORLD 






Though I speak with the tongues of men 
and of angels, and have not hove, I am be¬ 
come as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal. 
And though I have the gift of prophecy, and 
understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; 
and though I have all faith, so that I could 
remove mountains, and have not Love, I am 
nothing. And though I bestow all my goods 
to feed the poor, and though I give my body 
to be burned, and have not Love, it profiteth 
me nothing. 



Love sufferetli long, and is kind; 
Love envieth not; 

Love vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, 
Doth not behave itself unseemly, 
Seeketh not her own, 

Is not easily provoked, 

Thinketh no evil; 

Rejoiceth not in iniquity, 
but rejoiceth in the truth; 

Beareth all things, believeth all things, 
hopeth all things, 
endureth all things. 













































































Love never faileth: but whether there be 
prophecies, they shall fail; whether there be 
tongues, they shall cease; whether there be 
knowledge, it shall vanish away. For we 
know in part, and we prophesy in part. But 
when that which is perfect is come, then that 
which is in part shall be done away. When I 
was a child, I spake as a child, I understood 
as a child, I thought as a child: but when I 
became a man, I put away childish things. 
For now we see through a glass, darkly; but 
then face to face: now I know in part; but 
then shall I know even as also I am known. 
And now abideth faith, hope, Love, these three; 
but the greatest of these is Love.”— i Cor. xiii. 



THE GREATEST THING 
IN THE WORLD. 


JZJWERY one has asked himself the 
great question of antiquity as of 
the modern world: What is the sum- 
mum bonum —the supreme good? You 
have life before you. Once only you 
can live it. What is the noblest object 
of desire, the supreme gift to covet? 

We have been accustomed to be told 
that the greatest thing in the religious 
world is Faith. That great word has 

15 



i6 


THE GREATEST THING 


been the key-note for centuries of the 
popular religion; and we have easily 
learned to look upon it as the greatest 
thing in the world. Well, we are wrong. 
If we have been told that, we may miss 
the mark. I have taken you, in the 
chapter which I have just read, to Chris¬ 
tianity at its source; and there we have 
seen, “The greatest of these is love.” 
It is not an oversight. Paul was speak¬ 
ing of faith just a moment before. He 
says, “ If I have all faith, so that I can 
remove mountains, and have not love, I 
am nothing.” So far from forgetting 
he deliberately contrasts them, “Now 
abideth Faith, Hope, Love,” and with¬ 
out a moment’s hesitation the decision 
falls, “The greatest of these is Love.” 

And it is not prejudice. A man is apt 



IN THE WORLD. . 17 

to recommend to others his own strong 
point. L,ove was not Paul’s strong point. 
The observing student can detect a beau¬ 
tiful tenderness growing and ripening all 
through his character as Paul gets old; 
but the hand that wrote, “The greatest 
of these is love,” when we meet it first, 
is stained with blood. 

Nor is this letter to the Corinthians 
peculiar in singling out love as the sum- 
mum bonum. The masterpieces of Chris¬ 
tianity are agreed about it. Peter says, 
“Above all things have fervent love 
among yourselves.” Above all things. 
And John goes farther, “God is love.” 
And you remember the profound remark 
which Paul makes elsewhere, “Dove is 
the fulfilling of the law. ’ ’ Did you ever 

think what he meant by that ? In those 
2 



i8 


THE GREATEST THING 


days men were working their passage to 
Heaven by keeping the Ten Command¬ 
ments, and the hundred and ten other 
commandments which they had manufac¬ 
tured out of them. Christ said, I will 
show you a more simple way. If you 
do one thing, you will do these hundred 
and ten things, without ever thinking 
about them. If you love, you will un¬ 
consciously fulfil the whole law. And 
you can readily see for yourselves how 
that must be so. Take any of the com¬ 
mandments. u Thou shalt have no other 
gods before Me.” If a man love God, 
you will not require to tell him that. 
Tove is the fulfilling of that law. “Take 
not His name in vain.” Would he ever 
dream of taking His name in vain if he 
loved him? “Remember the Sabbath 



IN THE WORLD. 


33 


to any human being, let me do it now. 
Let me not defer it or neglect it, for I 
shall not pass this way again.” 

Generosity . ‘ ‘ Love envieth not. ’ ’ 
This is love in competition with others. 
Whenever you attempt a good work you 
will find other men doing the same kind 
of work, and probably doing it better. 
Envy them not. Envy is a feeling of ill- 
will to those who are in the same line as 
ourselves, a spirit of covetousness and 
detraction. How little Christian work 
even is a protection against un-Christian 
feeling. That most despicable of all the 
unworthy moods which cloud a Chris¬ 
tian’s soul assuredly waits for us on the 
threshold of every work, unless we are 
fortified with this grace of magnanimity. 
Only one thing truly need the Christian 

3 



34 


THE GREATEST THING 


envy, the large, rich, generous soul which 
“envieth not.” 

And then, after having learned all that, 
you have to learn this further thing, 
Humility —to put a seal upon your lips 
and forget what you have done. After 
you have been kind, after Love has stolen 
forth into the world and done its beauti¬ 
ful work, go back into the shade again 
and say nothing about it. Love hides 
even from itself. Love waives even self- 
satisfaction. 44 Love vaunteth not itself, 
is not puffed up.” 

The fifth ingredient is a somewhat 
strange one to find in this summum 
bonum: Courtesy. This is Love in so¬ 
ciety, Love in relation to etiquette. 
“ Love doth not behave itself unseemly.” 
Politeness has been defined as love in 



IN THE WORLD. 


35 


trifles. Courtesy is said to be love in little 
things. And the one secret of politeness 
is to love. Love cannot behave itself un¬ 
seemly. You can put the most untutored 
persons into the highest society, and if 
they have a reservoir of Love in their 
heart, they will not behave themselves 
unseemly. They simply cannot do it. 
Carlyle said of Robert Burns that there 
was no truer gentleman in Europe than 
the ploughman-poet. It was because he 
loved everything—the mouse, and the 
daisy, and all the things, great and small, 
that God had made. So with this simple 
passport he could mingle with any soci¬ 
ety, and enter courts and palaces from his 
little cottage on the banks of the Ayr. 
You know the meaning of the word “ gen¬ 
tleman.’ ’ It means a gentle man—a man 



36 


THE GREATEST THING 


who does things gently with love. And 
that is the whole art and mystery of it. 
The gentle man cannot in the nature of 
things do an ungentle, an ungentlemanly 
thing. The ungentle soul, the inconsid¬ 
erate, unsympathetic nature cannot do 
anything else. ‘ 1 Love doth not behave 
itself unseemly.” 

Unselfishness. ‘ 4 Love seeketli not her 
own.” Observe: Seeketh not even that 
which is her own. In Britain the English¬ 
man is devoted, and rightly, to his rights. 
But there come times when a man may 
exercise even the higher right of giving 
up his rights. Yet Paul does not sum¬ 
mon us to give up our rights. Love 
strikes much deeper. It would have us 
not seek them at all, ignore them, elimi- 

6 

nate the personal element altogether from 



IN THE WORLD. 


37 


our calculations. It is not hard to give 
up our rights. They are often eternal. 
The difficult thing is to give up ourselves. 
The more difficult thing still is not to seek 
things for ourselves at all. After we have 
sought them, bought them, won them, 
deserved them, we have taken the cream 
off them for ourselves already. Little 
cross then to give them up. But not to 
seek them, to look every man not on his 
own things, but on the things of others— 
id opus est. 11 Seekest thou great things 
for thyself?” said the prophet; u seek 
them not .” Why? Because there is no 
greatness in things . Things cannot be 
great. The only greatness is unselfish 
love. Even self-denial in itself is noth¬ 
ing, is almost a mistake. Only a great 
purpose or a mightier love can justify the 



38 


THE GREATEST THING 


waste. It is more difficult, I have said, 
not to seek our own at all, than, having 
sought it, to give it up. I must take that 
back. It is only true of a partly selfish 
heart. Nothing is a hardship to L,ove, and 
nothing is hard. I believe that Christ’s 
“yoke” is easy. Christ’s “yoke” is just 
his way of taking life. And I believe it is 
an easier way than any other. I believe it 
is a happier way than any other. The most 
obvious lesson in Christ’s teaching is that 
there is no happiness in having and getting 
anything, but only in giving. I repeat, 
there is no happiness in having or in get¬ 
ting , but only in giving. And half the world 
is on the wrong scent in pursuit of happi¬ 
ness. They think it consists in having 
and getting, and in being served by others. 
It consists in giving, and in serving 



IN THE WORLD. 


39 


others. He that would be great among 
you, said Christ, let him serve. He that 
would be happy, let him remember that 
there is but one way—it is more blessed, 
it is more happy, to give than to re¬ 
ceive. 

The next ingredient is a very remark¬ 
able one: Good Temper . 11 L,ove is not 

easily provoked.” Nothing could be 
more striking than to find this here. We 
are inclined to look upon bad temper as a 
very harmless weakness. We speak of it 
as a mere infirmity of nature, a family 
failing, a matter of temperament, not a 
thing to take into very serious account in 
estimating a man’s character. And yet 
here, right in the heart of this analysis 
of love, it finds a place; and the Bible 
again and again returns to condemn it as 



40 


THE GREATEST THING 


one of the most destructive elements in 
human nature. 

The peculiarity of ill temper is that it 
is the vice of the virtuous. It is often 
the one blot on an otherwise noble cha¬ 
racter. You know men who are all but 
perfect, and women who would be en¬ 
tirely perfect, but for an easily ruffled, 
quick-tempered, or “touchy” disposition. 
This compatibility of ill temper with 
high moral character is one of the stran¬ 
gest and saddest problems of ethics. The 
truth is there are two great classes of sins 
—sins of the Body, and sins of the Disposi¬ 
tion. The Prodigal Son may be taken 
as a type of the first, the Elder Brother 
of the second. Now, society has no doubt 
whatever as to which of these is the 
worse. Its brand falls, without a chal- 



IN THE WORED. 


41 


lenge, upon the Prodigal. But are we 
right? We have no balance to weigh 
one another’s sins, and coarser and finer 
are but human words; but faults in the 
higher nature may be less venial than 
those in the lower, and to the eye of Him 
who is Love, a sin against Love may seem 
a hundred times more base. No form of 
vice, not worldliness, not greed of gold, 
not drunkenness itself, does more to un- 
Christianize society than evil temper. 
For embittering life, for breaking up com¬ 
munities, for destroying the most sacred 
relationships, for devastating homes, for 
withering up men and women, for taking 
the bloom of childhood, in short, for sheer 
gratuitous misery-producing power, this 
influence stands alone. Look at the Elder 
Brother, moral, hard-working, patient, 



42 


THE greatest thing 


dutiful—let him get all credit for his vir¬ 
tues—look at this man, this baby, sulk¬ 
ing outside his own father’s door. u He 
was angry, ’ ’ we read, ‘ ‘ and would not go 
in.” Took at the effect upon the father, 
upon the servants, upon the happiness 
of the guests. Judge of the effect upon 
the Prodigal—and how many prodigals 
are kept out of the Kingdom of God by 
the unlovely character of those who pro¬ 
fess to be inside? Analyze, as a study 
in Temper, the thunder-cloud itself as 
it gathers upon the Elder Brother’s brow. 
What is it made of? Jealousy, anger, 
pride, uncharity, cruelty, self-righteous¬ 
ness, touchiness, doggedness, sullenness, 
—these are the ingredients of this dark 
and loveless soul. In varying propor¬ 
tions, also, these are the ingredients of 



IN THE WORLD. 


43 


all ill temper. Judge if such sins of the 
disposition are not worse to live in, and 
for others to live with, than sins of the 
body. Did Christ indeed not answer the 
question Himself when He said, “I say 
unto you, that the publicans and the 
harlots go into the Kingdom of Heaven 
before you. ’ ’ There is .really no place in 
Heaven for a disposition like this. A 
man with such a mood could only make 
Heaven miserable for all the people in it. 
Except, therefore, such a man be born 
again, he cannot, he simply cannot , enter 
the Kingdom of Heaven. For it is per¬ 
fectly certain—and you will not misun¬ 
derstand me—that to enter Heaven a 
man must take it with him. 

You will see then why Temper is sig¬ 
nificant. It is not in what it is alone, 



44 


THE GREATEST THING 


but in what it reveals. This is why I take 
the liberty now of speaking of it with 
such unusual plainness. It is a test for 
love, a symptom, a revelation of an un¬ 
loving nature at bottom. It is the inter¬ 
mittent fever which bespeaks unintermit- 
tent disease within ; the occasional bubble 
escaping to the surface which betrays 
some rottenness underneath ; a sample of 
the most hidden products of the soul 
dropped involuntarily when off one’s 
guard; in a word, the lightning form 
of a hundred hideous and un-Christian 
sins. For a want of patience, a want of 
kindness, a want of generosity, a want of 
courtesy, a want of unselfishness, are all 
instantaneously symbolized in one flash 
of Temper. 

Hence it is not enough to deal with the 



IN THE WORLD. 


45 


Temper. We must go to the source, and 
change the inmost nature, and the angry 
humors will die away of themselves. 
Souls are made sweet not by taking the 
acid fluids out, but by putting something 
in—a great Love, a new Spirit, the Spirit 
of Christ. Christ, the Spirit of Christ, 
interpenetrating ours, sweetens, purifies, 
transforms all. This only can eradicate 
what is wrong, work a chemical change, 
renovate and regenerate, and rehabilitate 
the inner man. Will-power does not 
change men. Time does not change 
men. Christ does. Therefore ‘ ‘ Let that 
mind be in you which was also in Christ 
Jesus.’’ Some of us have not much time 
to lose. Remember, once more, that this 
is a matter of life or death. I cannot 
help speaking urgently, for myself, for 



4 6 


THE GREATEST THING 


yourselves. “Whoso shall offend one of 
these little ones, which believe in me, it 
were better for him that a millstone were 
hanged about his neck, and that he were 
drowned in the depth of the sea. ’ ’ That 
is to say, it is the deliberate verdict of the 
Lord Jesus that it is better not to live 
than not to love. It is better not to live 
than not to love. 

Guilelessness and Sincerity may be dis¬ 
missed almost with a word. Guileless¬ 
ness is the grace for suspicious people. 
And the possession of it is the great secret 
of personal influence. You will find, if 
you think for a moment, that the people 
who influence you are people who believe 
in you. In an atmosphere of suspicion 
men shrivel up; but in that atmosphere 
they expand, and find encouragement and 



IN THE WORLD. 


47 


educative fellowship. It is a wonderful 
thing that here and there in this hard, 
uncharitable world there should still be 
left a few rare souls who think no evil. 
This is the great unworldliness. Love 
“thinketh no evil,” imputes no motive, 
sees the bright side, puts the best con¬ 
struction on every action. What a de¬ 
lightful state of mind to live in! What a 
stimulus and benediction even to meet 
with it for a day! To be trusted is to be 
saved. And if we try to influence or ele¬ 
vate others, we shall soon see that success 
is in proportion to their belief of our belief 
in them. For the respect of another is 
the first restoration of the self-respect a 
man has lost; our ideal of what he is 
becomes to him the hope and pattern of 
what he may become. 



48 


THE GREATEST THING 


“ Love rejoicetli not in iniquity, but re- 
joicetb in the truth.” I have called this 
Sincerity from the words rendered in the 
Authorized Version by “ rejoiceth in the 
truth.” And, certainly, were this the 
real translation, nothing could be more 
just. For he who loves will love Truth 
not less than men. He will rejoice in the 
Truth—rejoice not in what he has been 
taught to believe; not in this Church’s 
doctrine or in that; not in this ism or in 
that ism; but “in the Truth .” He will 
accept only what is real; he will strive to 
get at facts; he will search for Truth with 
a humble and unbiassed mind, and cherish 
whatever he finds at any sacrifice. But 
the more literal translation of the Revised 
Version calls for just such a sacrifice for 
truth’s sake here. For what Paul really 



IN THE WORLD. 


49 


meant is, as we there read, “Rejoiceth 
not in unrighteousness, but rejoiceth with 
the truth,” a quality which probably no 
one English word—and certainly not Sin¬ 
cerity —adequately defines. It includes, 
perhaps more strictly, the self-restraint 
which refuses to make capital out of 
others’ faults; the charity which delights 
not in exposing the weakness of others, 
but “covereth all things;” the sincerity 
of purpose which endeavors to see things 
as they are, and rejoices to find them 
better than suspicion feared or calumny 
denounced. 

So much for the analysis of Eove. 
Now the business of our lives is to have 
these things fitted into our characters. 
That is the supreme work to which we 
need to address ourselves in this world, 


4 



50 


THE GREATEST THING 


to learn L,ove. Is life not full of oppor¬ 
tunities for learning IyOve? Every man 
and woman every day has a thousand of 
them. The world is not a playground; 
it is a schoolroom. Eife is not a holiday, 
but an education. And the one eternal 
lesson for us all is how better we can love . 
What makes a man a good cricketer? 
Practice. What makes a man a good 
artist, a good sculptor, a good musician ? 
Practice. What makes a man a good 
linguist, a good stenographer ? Practice. 
What makes a man a good man ? Prac¬ 
tice. Nothing else. There is nothing 
capricious about religion. We do not get 
the soul iu different ways, under different 
laws, from those in which we get the 
body and the mind. If a man does not 
exercise his arm he develops no biceps 



IN THE WORLD. 


51 


muscle; and if a man does not exercise 
his soul, he acquires no muscle in his soul, 
no strength of character, no vigor of 
moral fibre, nor beauty of spiritual 
growth. Love is not a thing of enthusi¬ 
astic emotion. It is a rich, strong, man¬ 
ly, vigorous expression of the whole 
round Christian character—the Christlike 
nature in its fullest development. And 
the constituents of this great character 
are only to be built up by ceaseless 
practice. 

What was Christ doing in the car¬ 
penter’ s shop ? Practising. Though per¬ 
fect, we read that He learned obedience, 
and grew in wisdom and in favor with 
God. Do not quarrel therefore with your 
lot in life. Do not complain of its never- 
ceasing cares, its petty environment, the 




52 


THE GREATEST THING 


vexations you have to stand, the small 
and sordid souls you have to live and 
work with. Above all, do not resent 
temptation; do not be perplexed because 
it seems to thicken round you more and 
more, and ceases neither for effort nor 
for agony nor prayer. That is your prac¬ 
tice. That is the practice which God 
appoints you; and it is having its work 
in making you patient, and humble, and 
generous, and unselfish, and kind, and 
courteous. Do not grudge the hand that 
is moulding the still too shapeless image 
within you. It is growing more beauti¬ 
ful, though you see it not, and every 
touch of temptation may add to its per¬ 
fection. Therefore keep in the midst of 
life. Do not isolate yourself. Be among 
men, and among things, and among 



IN THE WORLD. 


53 


troubles, and difficulties, and obstacles. 
You remember Goethe’s words: Es bildet 
ein Talent sick in der Stille , Dock ein 
Character in dem Strom der Welt . 
u Taleut develops itself in solitude; 
character in the stream of life.” Talent 
develops itself in solitude—the talent of 
prayer, of faith, of meditation, of seeing 
the unseen; Character grows in the 
stream of the world’s life. That chiefly 
is where men are to learn love. 

How? Now, how? To make it easier, 
I have named a few of the elements of 
love. But these are only elements. 
Love itself can never be defined. Light 
is a something more than the sum of 
its ingredients—a glowing, dazzling, 
tremulous ether. And love is something 
more than all its elements—a palpitating, 




54 


THE GREATEST THING 


quivering, sensitive, living tiling. By- 
synthesis of all the colors, men can 
make whiteness, they cannot make light. 
By synthesis of all the virtues, men can 
make virtue, they cannot make love. 
How then are we to have this transcen¬ 
dent living whole conveyed into our 
souls? We brace our wills to secure it. 
We try to copy those who have it. We 
lay down rules about it. We watch. 
We pray. But these things alone will 
not bring Love into our nature. Love 
is an effect. And only as we fulfil the 
right condition can we have the effect 
produced. Shall I tell you what the 
cause is? 

If you turn to the Revised Version 
of the First Epistle of John you will 
find these words: “We love because He 



IN THE WORLD. 


55 


first loved us.” “We love,” not “We 
love Him ;.” That is the way the old 
version has it, and it is quite wrong. 
‘ ‘ We love —because He first loved us. ’’ 
Took at that word “because.” It is 
the cause of which I have spoken. “ Be¬ 
cause He first loved us,” the effect fol¬ 
lows that we love, we love Him, we love 
all men. We cannot help it. Because 
He loved us, we love, we love every¬ 
body. Our heart is slowly changed. 
Contemplate the love of Christ, and you 
will love. Stand before that mirror, re¬ 
flect Christ’s character, and you will be 
changed into the.same image from ten¬ 
derness to tenderness. There is no other 
way. You cannot love to order. You 
can only look at the lovely object, and 
fall in love with it, and grow into like- 



5 ^ 


THE GREATEST THING 


ness to it. And so look at this Perfect 
Character, this Perfect Life. Look at 
the great Sacrifice as He laid down Him¬ 
self, all through life, and upon the Cross 
of Calvary; and you must love Him. 
And loving Him, you must become like 
Him. Love begets love. It is a process 
of induction. Put a piece of iron in the 
presence of an electrified body, and that 
piece of iron for a time becomes elec- 

P . It is changed into a temporary 
st in the mere presence of a per¬ 
manent magnet, and as long as you leave 
the two side by side, they are both mag¬ 
nets alike. Remain side by side with 
Him who loved us, and gave Himself for 
us, and you too will become a permanent 
magnet, a permanently attractive force; 
and like Him you will draw all men 



IN THE WORLD. 


57 


unto you, like Him you will be drawn 
unto all men. That is the inevitable 
effect of Hove. Any man who fulfils 
that cause must have that effect pro¬ 
duced in him. Try to give up the idea 
that religion comes to us by chance, or 
by mystery, or by caprice. It comes to 
us by natural law, or by supernatural 
law, for all law is Divine. Edward Ir¬ 
ving went to see a dying boy once, and 
when he entered the room he just put his 
hand on the sufferer’s head, and said, 
“My boy, God loves you,” and went 
away. And the boy started from his 
bed, and called out to the people in the 
house, “God loves me! God loves me!” 
It changed that boy. The sense that God 
loved him overpowered him, melted him 
down, and began the creating of a new 



58 GREATEST THING IN THE WORLD. 


heart in him. And that is how the love 
of God melts down the unlovely heart 
in man, and begets in him the new crea¬ 
ture, who is patient and humble and 
gentle and unselfish. And there is no 
other way to get it. There is no mystery 
about it. We love others, we love every¬ 
body, we love our enemies, because He 
first loved us. 





THE DEFENCE. 


N OW I have a closing sentence or two 
to add about Paul’s reason for sing¬ 
ling out love as the supreme possession. 
It is a very remarkable reason. In a 
single word it is this: it lasts . ‘ ‘ L,ove, ’ ’ 
urges Paul, “never faileth.” Then he 
begins again one of his marvellous lists 
of the great things of the day, and ex¬ 
poses them one by one. He runs over 
the things that men thought were going 
to last, and shows that they are all fleet¬ 
ing, temporary, passing away. 

“Whether there be prophecies, they 

59 



6o 


THE GREATEST THING 


shall fail.” It was the mother’s am¬ 
bition for her boy in those days that he 
should become a prophet. For hundreds 
of years God had never spoken by means 
of any prophet, and at that time the 
prophet was greater than the King. Men 
waited wistfully for another messenger to 
come, and hung upon his lips when he 
appeared as upon the very voice of God. 
Paul says, “ Whether there be proph¬ 
ecies, they shall fail.” This book is full 
of prophecies. One by one they have 
“failed;” that is, having been fulfilled 
their work is finished ; they have nothing 
more to do now in the world except to 
feed a devout man’s faith. 

Then Paul talks about tongues. That 
was another thing that was greatly cov¬ 
eted. ‘ ‘ Whether there be tongues, they 



IN THE WORLD. 


6l 


shall cease.” As we all know, many, 
many centuries have passed since tongues 
have been known in this world. They 
have ceased. Take it in any sense you 
like. Take it, for illustration merely, 
as languages in general—a sense which 
was not in Paul’s mind at all, and which 
though it cannot give us the specific 
lesson will point the general truth. Con¬ 
sider the words in which these chapters 
were written—Greek. It has gone. Take 
the katin—the other great tongue of those 
days. It ceased long ago. kook at the 
Indian language. It is ceasing. The 
language of Wales, of Ireland, of the 
Scottish Highlands is dying before our 
eyes. The most popular book in the 
Bnglish tongue at the present time, ex¬ 
cept the Bible, is one of Dickens’s works, 



62 


THE GREATEST THING 


his Pickwick Papers. It is largely writ¬ 
ten in the language of London street-life ; 
and experts assure us that in fifty years 
it will be unintelligible to the average 
English reader. 

Then Paul goes farther, and with even 
greater boldness adds, “Whether there be 
knowledge, it shall vanish away.” The 
wisdom of the ancients, where is it ? It 
is wholly gone. A schoolboy to-day 
knows more than Sir Isaac Newton knew. 
His knowledge has vanished away. You 
put yesterday’s newspaper in the fire. 
Its knowledge has vanished away. You 
buy the old editions of the great encyclo¬ 
paedias for a few pence. Their know¬ 
ledge has vanished away. Look how the 
coach has been superseded by the use 
of steam. Look how electricity has 



IN THE WORLD. 


63 


superseded that, and swept a hundred 
almost new inventions into oblivion. 
One of the greatest living authorities, Sir 
William Thompson, said the other day, 
•‘The steam-engine is passing away.” 
“Whether there be knowledge, it shall 
vanish away.” At every workshop you 
will see, in the back yard, a heap of old 
iron, a few wheels, a few levers, a few 
cranks, broken and eaten with rust. 
Twenty years ago that was the pride of 
the city. Men flocked in from the country 
to see the great invention; now it is su¬ 
perseded, its day is done. And all the 
boasted science and philosophy of this day 
will soon be old. But yesterday, in the 
University of Edinburgh, the greatest fig¬ 
ure in the faculty was Sir James Simpson, 
the discoverer of chloroform. The other 



6 4 


THE GREATEwST THING 


day his successor and nephew, Professor 
Simpson, was asked by the librarian of 
the University to go to the library and 
pick out the books on his subject that 
were no longer needed. And his reply 
to the librarian was this: “Take every 
text-book that is more than ten years old, 
and put it down in the cellar. n Sir 
James Simpson was a great authority only 
a few years ago: men came from all parts 
of the earth to consult him; and almost 
the whole teaching of that time is con¬ 
signed by the science of to-day to oblivion. 
And in every branch of science it is the 
same. “ Now we know in part. We see 
through a glass darkly. ’ ’ 

Can you tell me anything that is going 
to last? Many things Paul did not con¬ 
descend to name. He did not mention 



IN THE WORLD. 


65 


money, fortune, fame; but he picked out 
the great things of his time, the things 
the best men thought had something in 
them, and brushed them peremptorily 
aside. Paul had no charge against these 
things in themselves. All he said about 
them was that they would not last. They 
were great things, but not supreme things. 
There were things beyond them. What 
we are stretches past what we do, beyond 
what we possess. Many things that men 
denounce as sins are not sins; but they 
are temporary. And that is a favorite 
argument of the New Testament. John 
says of the world, not that it is wrong, 
but simply that it “ passeth away.” 
There is a great deal in the w T orld that is 
delightful and beautiful; there is a great 

deal in it that is great and engrossing; 

5 



66 


THE GREATEST THING 


but it will not last. All tliat is in the 
world, the lust of the eye, the lust of the 
flesh, and the pride of life, are but for a 
little while. Love not the world there¬ 
fore. Nothing that it contains is worth 
the life and consecration of an immortal 
soul. The immortal soul must give itself 
to something that is immortal. And the 
only immortal things are these: “Now 
abideth faith, hope, love, but the greatest 
of these is love.” 

Some think the time may come when two 
of these three things will also pass away— 
faith into sight, hope into fruition. Paul 
does not say so. We know but little now 
about the conditions of the life that is to 
come. But what is certain is that Love 
must last. God, the Eternal God, is 
Love. Covet therefore that everlasting 



IN THE WORLD. 


67 


gift, that one thing which it is certain is 
going to stand, that one coinage which 
will be current in the Universe when all 
the other coinages of all the nations of the 
world shall be useless and unhonored. 
You will give yourselves to many things, 
give yourself first to L,ove. Hold things 
in their proportion. Hold things in their 
proportion . L,et at least the first great 
object of our lives be to achieve the cha¬ 
racter defended in these words, the cha¬ 
racter—and it is the character of Christ 
—which is built round Dove. 

I have said this thing is eternal. Did 
you ever notice how continually John 
associates love and faith with eternal life? 
I was not told when I was a boy that 
“God so loved the world that He gave 
His only-begotten Son, that whosoever 



68 


THE GREATEST THING 


believeth in Him should have everlasting 
life.” What I was told, I remember, was, 
that God so loved the world that, if I 
trusted in Him, I was to have a thing 
called peace, or I was to have rest, or I 
was to have joy, or I was to have safety. 
But I had to find out for myself that who¬ 
soever trusteth in Him—that is, whoso¬ 
ever loveth Him, for trust is only the 
avenue to Love—hath everlasting life. 
The Gospel offers a man life. Never offer 
men a thimbleful of Gospel. Do not 
offer them merely joy, or merely peace, or 
merely rest, or merely safety; tell them 
how Christ came to give men a more 
abundant life than they have, a life abun¬ 
dant in love, and therefore abundant in 
salvation for themselves, and large in en¬ 
terprise for the alleviation and redemption 



IN THE WORLD. 


69 


of the world. Then only can the Gospel 
take hold of the whole of a man, body, 
soul, and spirit, and give to each part of 
his nature its exercise and reward. Many 
of the current Gospels are addressed only 
to a part of man’s nature. They offer 
peace, not life; faith, not hove; justifica¬ 
tion, not regeneration. And men slip 
back again from such religion because it 
has never really held them. Their na¬ 
ture was not all in it. It offered no deep¬ 
er and gladder life-current than the life 
that was lived before. Surely it stands 
to reason that only a fuller love can com¬ 
pete with the love of the world. 

To love abundantly is to live abun¬ 
dantly, and to love for ever is to live for 
ever. Hence, eternal life is inextricably 
bound up with love. We want to live 



70 


THE GREATEST THING 


for ever for the same reason that we want 
to live to-morrow. Why do you want to 
live to-morrow? It is because there is 
some one who loves you, and whom you 
want to see to-morrow, and be with, and 
love back. There is no other reason why 
we should live on than that we love and 
are beloved. It is when a man has no 
one to love him that he commits suicide. 
So long as he has friends, those who love 
him and whom he loves, he will live, be¬ 
cause to live is to love. Be it but the 
love of a dog, it will keep him in life; 
but let that go and he has no contact with 
life, no reason to live. He dies by his 
own hand. Eternal life also is to know 
God, and God is love. This is Christ’s 
own definition. Ponder it. “This is 
life eternal, that they might know Thee 



IN THE WORLD. 


71 


the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom 
Thou hast sent. ’ ’ Love must be eternal. It 
is what God is. On the last analysis, then, 
love is life. Love never faileth, and life 
never faileth, so long as there is love. That 
is the philosophy of what Paul is showing 
us; the reason why in the nature of things 
Love should be the supreme thing—because 
it is going to last; because in the nature 
of things it is an Eternal Life. It is a 
thing that we are living now, not that we 
get when we die; that we shall have a 
poor chance of getting when we die un¬ 
less we are living now. No worse fate^ 
can befall a man in this world than to 
live and grow old alone, unloving, and 
unloved. To be lost is tp live in an un¬ 
regenerate condition, loveless and un¬ 
loved; and to be saved is to love; and he 



72 


THE GREATEST THING 


that dwelleth in love dwelleth already in 
God. For God is Love. 

Now I have all but finished. How 
many of you will join me in reading 
this chapter once a week for the next 
three months? A man did that once 
and it changed his whole life. Will you 
do it ? It is for the greatest thing in the 
world. You might begin by reading it 
every day, especially the verses which 
describe the perfect character. 1 ‘ Love 
suffereth long, and is kind; love envieth 
not; love vaunteth not itself.” Get 
these ingredients into your life. Then 
everything that you do is eternal. It is 
worth doing. It is worth giving time 
to. No man can become a saint in his 
sleep ; and to fulfil the condition required 
demands a certain amount of prayer and 



IN THE WORLD. 


73 


meditation and time, just as improvement 
in any direction, bodily or mental, re¬ 
quires preparation and care. Address 
yourselves to that one thing; at any 
cost have this transcendent character 
exchanged for yours. You will find as 
you look back upon your life that the 
moments that stand out, the moments 
when you have really lived, are the 
moments when you have done things 
in a spirit of love. As memory scans 
the past, above and beyond all the tran¬ 
sitory pleasures of life, there leap for¬ 
ward those supreme hours when you 
have been enabled to do unnoticed kind¬ 
nesses to those round about you, things 
too trifling to speak about, but which 
you feel have entered into your eternal 
life. I have seen almost all the beauti- 



74 


THE GREATEST THING 


ful things God has made; I have enjoyed 
almost every pleasure that He has planned 
for man; and yet as I look back I see 
standing out above all the life that has 
gone four or five short experiences when 
the love of God reflected itself in some 
poor imitation, some small act of love 
of mine, and these seem to be the 
things which alone of all one’s life 
abide. Everything else in all our lives 
is transitory. Every other good is vision¬ 
ary. But the acts of love which no man 
knows about, or can ever know about— 
they never fail. 

In the Book of Matthew, where the 
Judgment Day is depicted for us in the 
imagery of One seated upon a throne 
and dividing the sheep from the goats, 
the test of a man then is not, “ How 



IN THE WORLD. 


75 


have I believed?” but “How have I 
loved?” The test of religion, the final 
test of religion, is not religiousness, but 
hove. I.say the final test of religion at 
that great Day is not religiousness, but 
Love; not what I have done, not what I 
have believed, not what I have achieved, 
but how I have discharged the common 
charities of life. Sins of commission in 
that awful indictment are not even re¬ 
ferred to. By what we have not done, 
by sms of omission , we are judged. It 
could not be otherwise. For the with¬ 
holding of love is the negation of the 
spirit of Christ, the proof that we never 
knew Him, that for us He lived in vain. 
It means that He suggested nothing in 
all our thoughts, that He inspired noth¬ 
ing in all our lives, that we were not 



76 


THE GREATEST THING 


once near enough to Him to be seized 
with the spell of His compassion for the 
world. It means that— 

“I lived for myself, I thought for myself, 
For myself, and none beside— 

Just as if Jesus had never lived, 

As if He had never died.” 

It is the Son of Man before whom the 
nations of the world shall be gathered. 
It is in the presence of Humanity that 
we shall be charged. And the spectacle 
itself, the mere sight of it, will silently 
judge each one. Those will be there 
whom we have met and helped; or there, 
the unpitied multitude whom w r e neg¬ 
lected or despised. No other Witness 
need be summoned. No other charge 
than lovelessness shall be preferred. Be 



IN THE WORLD. 


77 


not deceived. The words which all of 
us shall one Day hear sound not of the¬ 
ology but of life, not of churches and 
saints but of the hungry and the poor, 
not of creeds and doctrines but of shelter 
and clothing, not of Bibles and prayer- 
books but of cups of cold water in the 
name of Christ. Thank God the Chris¬ 
tianity of to-day is coming nearer the 
world’s need. Dive to help that on. 
Thank God men know better, by a hairs- 
breadth, what religion is, what God is, 
who Christ is, where Christ is. Who 
is Christ? He who fed the hungry, 
clothed the naked, visited the sick. And 
where is Christ? Where?—whoso shall 
receive a little child in My name receiv- 
eth Me. And who are Christ’s? Kvery 
one that loveth is born of God. 



* 


PAX VOBISCUM 





IN THE WORLD. 


19 


day to keep it holy.” Would he not be 
too glad to have one day in seven to dedi¬ 
cate more exclusively to the object of his 
affection? Love would fulfil all these 
laws regarding God. And so, if he loved 
Man, you would never think of telling 
him to honor his father and mother. He 
could not do anything else. It would 
be preposterous to tell him not to kill. 
You could only insult him if you sug¬ 
gested that he should not steal—how 
could he steal from those he loved? It 
would be superfluous to beg him not to 
bear false witness against his neighbor. 
If he loved him it would be the last thing 
he would do. And you would never 
dream of urging him not to covet what 
his neighbors had. He would rather 
they possessed it than himself. In this 



20 GREATEST THING IN THE WORLD. 


way “Love is the fulfilling of the law.” 
It is the rule for fulfilling all rules, the 
new commandment for keeping all the 
old commandments, Christ’s one secret 
of the Christian life. 

Now Paul had learned that; and in 
this noble eulogy he has given us the 
most wonderful and original account ex¬ 
tant of the summum bonum. We may 
divide it into three parts. In the be¬ 
ginning of the short chapter, we have 
Love contrasted; in the heart of it, we 
have Love analyzed; toward the end, we 
have Love defended as the supreme gift. 




THE CONTRAST. 


pAUIy begins by contrasting L,ove with 
other things that men in those days 
thought much of. I shall not attempt 
to go over those things in detail. Their 
inferiority is already obvious. 

He contrasts it with eloquence. And 
what a noble gift it is, the power of play¬ 
ing upon the souls and wills of men, and 
rousing them to lofty purposes and holy 
deeds. Paul says, “If I speak with the 
tongues of men and of angels, and have 
not love, I am become as sounding brass, 
or a tinkling cymbal. ’ ’ And we all 



22 


THE GREATEST THING 


know why. We have all felt the brazen¬ 
ness of words without emotion, the hol¬ 
lowness, the unaccountable unpersuasive¬ 
ness, of eloquence behind which lies no 
Love. 

He contrasts it with prophecy. He 
contrasts it with mysteries. He con¬ 
trasts it with faith. He contrasts it 
with charity. Why is Love greater than 
faith? Because the end is greater than 
the means. And why is it greater than 
charity? Because the whole is greater 
than the part. Love is greater than 
faith, because the end is greater than the 
means. What is the use of having faith ? 
It is to connect the soul with God. And 
what is the object of connecting man with 
God? That he may become like God. 
But God is Love. Hence Faith, the 



IN THE WORLD. 


23 


means, is in order to Love, the end. 
Love, therefore, obviously is greater than 
faith. It is greater than charity, again, 
because the whole is greater than a part. 
Charity is only a little bit of Love, one 
of the innumerable avenues of Love, and 
there may even be, and there is, a great 
deal of charity without Love. It is a very 
easy thing to toss a copper to a beggar on 
the street; it is generally an easier thing 
than not to do it. Yet Love is just as 
often in the withholding. We purchase 
relief from the sympathetic feelings roused 
by the spectacle of misery, at the copper’s 
cost. It is too cheap—too cheap for us, 
and often too dear for the beggar. If we 
really loved him we would either do more 
for him, or less. 

Then Paul contrasts it with sacrifice 



24 


THE GREATEST THING 


and martyrdom. And I beg the little 
band of would-be missionaries—and I have 
the honor to call some of you by this 
name for the first time—to remember that 
though you give your bodies to be burned, 
and have not Love, it profits nothing— 
nothing ! You can take nothing greater 
to the heathen world than the impress 
and reflection of the Love of God upon 
your own character. That is the univer¬ 
sal language. It will take you years to 
speak in Chinese, or in the dialects of 
India. From the day you land, that lan¬ 
guage of Love, understood by all, will be 
pouring forth its unconscious eloquence. 
It is the man who is the missionary, it is 
not his words. His character is his mes¬ 
sage. In the heart of Africa, among the 
great Lakes, I have come across black 



IN THE WORLD. 


25 


men and women who remembered the 
only white man they ever saw before— 
David Divingstone; and as you cross his 
footsteps in that dark continent, men’s 
faces light up as they speak of the kind 
Doctor who passed there years ago. They 
could not understand him; but they felt 
the Dove that beat in his heart. Take 
into your new sphere of labor, where 
you also mean to lay down your life, that 
simple charm, and your lifework must 
succeed. You can take nothing greater, 
you need take nothing less. It is not 
worth while going if you take anything 
less. You may take every accomplish¬ 
ment; you may be braced for every sacri¬ 
fice; but if you give your body to be 
burned, and have not Dove, it will profit 
you and the cause of Christ nothing. 




THE ANALYSIS. 


FTER contrasting Love with these 



things, Paul, in three verses, very 
short, gives us an amazing analysis of 
what this supreme thing is. I ask you 
to look at it. It is a compound thing, 
he tells us. It is like light. As you 
have seen a man of science take a beam 
of light and pass it through a crystal 
prism, as you have seen it come out on 
the other side of the prism broken up 
into its component colors—red, and blue, 
and yellow, and violet, and orange, and 
all the colors of the rainbow—so Paul 


26 



GREATEST THING IN THE WORLD. 2 7 


passes this thing, Love, through the 
magnificent prism of his inspired intel¬ 
lect, and it comes out on the other side 
broken up into its elements. And in 
these few words we have what one might 
call the Spectrum of Love, the analysis 
of Love. Will you observe what its 
elements are? Will you notice that 
they have common names; that they 
are virtues which we hear about every 
day; that they are things which can be 
practised by every man in every place 
in life; and how, by a multitude of 
small things and ordinary virtues, the 
supreme thing, the summum bonum , is 
made up? 

The Spectrum of Love has nine in¬ 
gredients:— 



28 


THE GREATEST THING 


Patience . . “ Love sufFereth long. ’ ’ 

Kindness . . “And is kind.” 

Generosity . “Love envieth not.” 
Humility . . “Love vaunteth not it¬ 

self, is not puffed up.” 
Courtesy . . “Doth not behave itself 

unseemly.” 

Unselfishness “Seeketh not her own.” 
Good Temper “Is not easily provoked.” 
Guilelessness “Thinketh no evil.” 
Sincerity . . “ Rejoiceth not in iniquity, 

but rejoiceth in the 
truth.” 

Patience; kindness; generosity; humil¬ 
ity; courtesy; unselfishness; good tem¬ 
per; guilelessness; sincerity—these make 
up the supreme gift, the stature of the 
perfect man. You will observe that all 



• IN THE WORLD. 


29 


are in relation to men, in relation to life, 
in relation to the known to-day and the 
near to-morrow, and not to the unknown 
eternity. We hear much of love to God; 
Christ spoke much of love to man. We 
make a great deal of peace with heaven; 
Christ made' much of peace on earth. 
Religion is not a strange or added thing, 
but the inspiration of the secular life, 
the breathing of an eternal spirit through* 
this temporal world. The supreme thing, 
in short, is not a thing at all, but the giv¬ 
ing of a further finish to the multitudi¬ 
nous words and acts which make up the 
sum of every common day. 

There is no time to do more than make • 
a passing note upon each of these ingredi¬ 
ents. Love is Patience . This is the nor¬ 
mal attitude of Love; Love passive, Love 



30 


THE GREATEST THING 


waiting to begin; not in a hurry; calm; 
ready to do its work when the summons 
comes, but meantime wearing the orna¬ 
ment of a meek and quiet spirit. Love 
suffers long; beareth all things; believeth 
all things; hopeth all things. For Love 
understands, and therefore waits. 

Kindness. Love active. Have you 
ever noticed how much of Christ’s life 
was spent in doing kind things—in 
inerely doing kind things ? Run over it 
with that in view, and you will find that 
He spent a great proportion of His time 
simply in making people happy, in doing 
good turns to people. There is only one 
thing greater than happiness in the world, 
and that is holiness; and it is not in our 
keeping; but what God has put in our 
power is the happiness of those about us, 



IN THE WORLD. 


31 


and that is largely to be secured by our 
being kind to them. 

11 The greatest thing, ’ ’ says some one, 
“a man can do for his Heavenly Father 
is to be kind to some of His other chil¬ 
dren. ’ ’ I wonder why it is that we are not 
all kinder than we are ? How much the 
world needs it. How easily it is done. 
How instantaneously it acts. How infal¬ 
libly it is remembered. How super¬ 
abundantly it pays itself back—for there 
is no debtor jin the world so honorable, 
so superbly honorable, as Love. 1 ‘ Love 
never faileth. ’ ’ Love is success, Love is 
happiness, Love is life. “Love I say,” 
with Browning, “ is energy of Life.” 

“For life, with all it yields of joy or woe 
And hope and fear, 



32 


THE GREATEST THING 


Is just our chance o’ the prize of learning love,— 
How love might be, hath been indeed, and is.” 

Where Love is, God is. He that dwelleth 
in Love dwelleth in God. God is Love. 
Therefore love . Without distinction, 
without calculation, without procrastina¬ 
tion, love. Lavish it upon the poor, 
where it is very easy; especially upon the 
rich, who often need it most; most of all 
upon our equals, where it is very difficult, 
and for whom perhaps we each do least 
of all. There is a difference between 
trying to please and giving pleasure . 
Give pleasure. Lose no chance of giv¬ 
ing pleasure. For that is the ceaseless 
and anonymous triumph of a truly loving 
spirit. 4 ‘ I shall pass through this world 
but once. Any good thing therefore that 
I can do, or any kindness that I can show 



“Come unto me, all ye that labor and are 
heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my 
yoke upon you, and learn of me : for I am meek 
and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto 
your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my bur¬ 
den is light.” 


6 






PAX VOBISCUM. 


HEARD the other morning a ser¬ 
mon by a distinguished preacher 
upon “Rest.” It was full of beautiful 
thoughts; but when I came to ask my¬ 
self, 11 How does he say I can get Rest ?’ ’ 
there was no answer. The sermon was 
sincerely meant to be practical, yet it 
contained no experience that seemed to 
me to be tangible, nor any advice which 
could help me to find the thing itself as 
I went about the world that afternoon. 


83 




8 4 


PAX VOBISCUM. 


Yet this omission of the only important 
problem was not the fault of the preacher. 
The whole popular religion is in the twi¬ 
light here. And when pressed for really 
working specifics for the experiences 
with which it deals, it falters, and seems 
to lose itself in mist. 

The want of connection between the 
great words of religion and every-day life 
has bewildered and discouraged all of us. 
Christianity possesses the noblest words 
in the language; its literature overflows 
with terms expressive of the greatest and 
happiest moods which can fill the soul of 
man. Rest, Joy, Peace, Faith, Tove, 
Tight—these ^ords occur with such per¬ 
sistency in hymns and prayers that an 
observer might think they formed the 
staple of Christian experience. But on 



PEACE BE WITH YOU. 


85 


coming to close quarters with the actual 
life of most of us, how surely would he 
be disenchanted ! I do not think we our¬ 
selves are aware how much our religious 
life is made up of phrases; how much 
of what we call Christian experience is 
only a dialect of the Churches, a mere re¬ 
ligious phraseology with almost nothing 
behind it in what we really feel and 
know. 

To some of us, indeed, the Christian 
experiences seem further away than when 
we took the first steps in the Christian 
life. That life has not opened out as we 
had hoped ^we do not regret our religion, 
but we are disappointed with it| There 
are times, perhaps, when wandering notes 
from a diviner music stray into our 
spirits; but these experiences come at 




86 


PAX VOBISCUM. 


few and fitful moments. We have no 
sense of possession in them. When they 
visit us, it is a surprise. When they 
leave us, it is without explanation. 
When we wish their return, we do 
not know how to secure it. 

All which points to a religion without 
solid base, and a poor and flickering life. 
It means a great bankruptcy in those 
experiences which give Christianity its 
personal solace and make it attractive 
to the world, and a great uncertainty 
as to any remedy. It is as if we knew 
everything about health—except the way 
to get it. 

I am quite sure that the difficulty does 

not lie in the fact that men are not in 

# 

earnest. This is simply not the fact. 
All around us Christians are wearing 



PEACE BE WITH YOU. 


87 


themselves out in trying to be better. 
The amount of spiritual longing in the 
world—in the hearts of unnumbered 
thousands of men and women in whom 
we should never suspect it; among the 
wise and thoughtful; among the young 
and gay, who seldom assuage and never 
betray their thirst—this is one of the 
most wonderful and touching facts of life. 
It is not more heat that is needed, but 
more light; not more force, but a wiser 
direction to be given to very real energies 
already there. 

The Address which follows is offered as 
a humble contribution to this problem, 
and in the hope that it may help some 
who are “seeking Rest and finding 
none” to a firmer footing on one great, 
solid, simple principle which underlies 



88 


PAX VOBISCUM. 


not the Christian experiences alone, but 
all experiences, and all life. 

What Christian experience wants is 
thread , a vertebral column, method. It 
is impossible to believe that there is no 
remedy for its unevenness and dishevel- 
#ient, or that the remedy is a secret. 
The idea, also, that some few men, by 
happy chance or happier temperament, 
have been given the secret—as if there 
were some sort of knack or trick of it— 
is wholly incredible. Religion must 
ripen its fruit for every temperament; 
and the way even into its highest heights 
must be by a gateway through which the 
peoples of the world may pass. 

I shall try to lead up to this gateway 
by a very familiar path. But as that path 
is strangely unfrequented, and even un- 



PEACE BE WITH YOU. 


89 


known, where it passes into the religious 
sphere, I must dwell for a moment on the 
commonest of commonplaces. 





EFFECTS REQUIRE CAUSES. 


OTHING that happens in the world 
happens by chance. God is a God of - 
order. Everything is arranged upon defi¬ 
nite principles, and never*at random. The 
world, even the religions world, is gov¬ 
erned by law. Character is governed by 
law. Happiness is governed by law. 
The Christian experiences are governed 
by law. Men, forgetting this, expect 
Rest, Joy, Peace, Faith to drop into their 
souls from the air like snow or rain. But 
in point of fact they do not do so; and if 
they did they would no less have their 

90 



EFFECTS REQUIRE CAUSES. 


9 * 


origin in previous activities and be con¬ 
trolled by natural laws. Rain and snow 
do drop from the air, but not without a 
long previous history. They are the ma¬ 
ture effects of former causes. Equally so 
are Rest, and Peace, and Joy. They, too, 
have each a previous history. Storms 
and winds and calms are not accidents, 
but are brought about by antecedent cir¬ 
cumstances. Rest and Peace are but 
calms in man’s inward nature, and arise 
through causes as definite and as inevit¬ 
able. 

Realize it thoroughly: it is a method¬ 
ical not an accidental world. If a house¬ 
wife turns out a good cake, it is the result 
of a sound receipt, carefully applied. She 
cannot mix the assigned ingredients and 
fire them for the appropriate time without 



92 


PAX VOBISCUM. 


producing the result. It is not she who 
has made the cake; it is nature. She 
brings related things together; sets causes 
at work; these causes bring about the re¬ 
sult. She is not a creator, but an inter¬ 
mediary. She does not expect random 
causes to produce specific effects—random 
ingredients would only produce random 
cakes. So it is in the making of Chris¬ 
tian experiences. Certain lines are fol¬ 
lowed ; certain effects are the result. 
These effects cannot but be the result. 
But the result can never take place with¬ 
out the previous cause. To expect results 
without antecedents is to expect cakes 
without ingredients. That impossibility 
is precisely the almost universal expecta¬ 
tion. 

Now what I mainly wish to do is to 



EFFECTS REQUIRE CAUSES. 


93 


help you firmly to grasp this simple prin¬ 
ciple of Cause and Effect in the spiritual 
world. And instead of applying the prin¬ 
ciple generally to each of the Christian 
experiences in turn, I shall examine its 
application to one in some little detail. 
The one I shall select is Rest. And I 
think any one who follows the applica¬ 
tion in this single instance will be able to 
apply it for himself to all the others. 

Take such a sentence as this: African 
explorers are subject to fevers which cause 
restlessness and delirium. Note the ex¬ 
pression, “cause restlessness.” Restless¬ 
ness has a cause . Clearly, then, any one 
who wished to get rid of restlessness would 
proceed at once to deal with the cause. 
If that were not removed, a doctor might 
prescribe a hundred things, and all might 



94 


PAX VOBISCUM. 


be taken in turn, without producing the 
’ least effect. Things are so arranged in 
the original planning of the world that 
certain effects must follow certain causes, 
and certain causes must be abolished be¬ 
fore certain effects can be removed. Cer¬ 
tain parts of Africa are inseparably linked 
with the physical experience called fever; 
this fever is in turn infallibly linked with 
a mental experience called restlessness 
and delirium. To abolish the mental ex¬ 
perience the radical method would be to 
abolish the physical experience, and the 
way of abolishing the physical experience 
would be to abolish Africa, or to cease to go 
there. Now this holds good for all other 
forms of Restlessness. Every other form 
and kind of Restlessness in the world has 
a definite cause, and. the particular kind 



EFFECTS REQUIRE CAUSES. 95 


of Restlessness can only be removed by 
removing the allotted cause. 

All this is also true of Rest. Restless¬ 
ness has a cause: must not Rest have a 
cause? Necessarily. If it were a chance 
world we would not expect this; but, 
being a methodical world, it cannot be 
otherwise. Rest, physical rest, moral 
rest, spiritual rest, every kind of rest, has 
a cause, as certainly as restlessness. Now 
causes are discriminating. There is one 
kind of cause for every particular effect, 
and no other; and if one particular effect 
is desired, the corresponding cause must 
be set in motion. It is no use proposing 
finely devised schemes, or going through 
general pious exercises in the hope that 
somehow Rest will come. The Christian 
life is not casual, but causal. All nature is 



9 6 


PAX VOBISCUM. 


a standing protest against the absurdity of 
expecting to secure spiritual effects, or any 
effects, without the employment of appro¬ 
priate causes. The Great Teacher dealt 
what ought to have been the final blow 
to this infinite irrelevancy by a single 
question, “Do men gather grapes of 
thorns or figs of thistles?” 

Why, then, did the Great Teacher not 
educate His followers fully? Why did 
He not tell us, for example, how such a 
thing as Rest might be obtained? The 
answer is, that He did. But plainly, ex¬ 
plicitly, in so many words ? Yes, plainly, 
explicitly, in so many words,. He as¬ 
signed Rest to its cause, in words with 
which each of us has been familiar from 
his earliest childhood. 

He begins, you remember—for you at 



EFFECTS REQUIRE CAUSES. 


97 


once know the passage I refer to—almost 
as if Rest could be had without any 
cause: u Come unto Me,” He says, “and 
I will give you Rest. ’ ’ 

Rest, apparently, was a favor to be be¬ 
stowed; men had but to come to Him; 
He would give it to every applicant. 
But the next sentence takes that all back. 
The qualification, indeed, is added instan¬ 
taneously. For what the first sentence 
seemed t© give was next thing to an im¬ 
possibility. For how, in a literal sense, 
can Rest be given ? One could no more 
give away Rest than he could give away 
Laughter. We speak of “causing” 
laughter, which we can do; but we can¬ 
not give it away. When we speak of 
giving pain, we know perfectly well we 

cannot give pain away. And when we 
7 



9 8 


PAX VOBISCUM. 


aim at giving pleasure, all that we do is 
to arrange a set of circumstances in such 
a way as that these shall cause pleasure. 

, Of course there is a sense, and a very 
wonderful sense, in which a Great Per¬ 
sonality breathes upon all who come 
within its influence an abiding peace and 
trust. Men can be to other men as the 
shadow of a great rock in a thirsty land. 
Much more Christ; much more Christ as 
Perfect Man; much more still as Saviour 
of the world. But it is not this of which 
I speak. When Christ said He would 

I give men Rest, He meant simply that He 
would put them in the way of it. By no 
act of conveyance would, or could, He 
make over His own Rest to them. He 
could give them His receipt for it. That 
was all. But He would not make it for 




EFFECTS REQUIRE CAUSES. 


99 


them; for one thing, it was not in His 
plan to make it for them; for another 
thing, men were not so planned that it 
could be made for them; and for yet an¬ 
other thing, it was a thousand times bet¬ 
ter that they should make it for them¬ 
selves. 

That this is the meaning becomes 
obvious from the wording of the second 
sentence: ‘ ‘ Learn of Me and ye shall 
find Rest.” Rest, that is to say, is not 
a thing that can be given, but a tiling to 
be acquired. It comes not by an act, but 
by a process. It is not to be found in a 
happy hour, as one finds a treasure; but 
slowly, as one finds knowledge. It could 
indeed be no more found in a moment 
than could knowledge. A soil has to be 
prepared for it. Like a fine fruit, it will 



100 


PAX VOBISCUM. 


grow in one climate and not in another; 
at one altitude and not at another. Like 
all growths it will have an orderly de¬ 
velopment and mature by slow degrees. 

The nature of this slow process Christ 
clearly defines when He says we are to 
achieve Rest by learning . ‘ ‘ Learn of 
Me,” He says, “and ye shall find rest to 
your so.uls.” Now consider the extra¬ 
ordinary originality of this utterance. 
How novel the connection between these 
two words, ‘ ‘ Learn ’ ’ and ‘ ‘ Rest ’ ’ ? 
How few of us have ever associated them 
—ever thought that Rest was a thing to 
be learned ; ever laid ourselves out for it 
as we would to learn a language; ever 
practised it as we would practise the vio¬ 
lin? Does it not show how entirely new 
Christ’s teaching still is to the world, 



EFFECTS REQUIRE CAUSES. IOI 


that so old and threadbare an aphorism 
should still be so little applied? The last 
thing most of us would have thought of 
would have been to associate Rest with 
Work . 

What must one work at ? What is that 
which if duly learned will find the soul 
of man in Rest? Christ answers with¬ 
out the least hesitation. He specifies 
two things—Meekness and Lowliness. 
“Learn of Me,” He says, “for I am 
meek and lowly in heart.” Now, these 
two things are not chosen at random. 
To these accomplishments, in a special 
way, Rest is attached. Learn these, in 
short, and you have already found Rest. 
These as they stand are direct causes of 
Rest; will produce it at once ; cannot but 
produce it at once. And if you think for 



102 


PAX VOBISCUM. 


a single moment, you will see how this is 
necessarily so, for causes are never arbi¬ 
trary, and the connection between ante¬ 
cedent and consequent here and every¬ 
where lies deep in the nature of things. 

What is the connection, then ? I 
answer by a further question. What 
are the chief causes of Unrest? If you 
know yourself, you will answer Pride, 
Selfishness, Ambition. As you look back 
upon the past years of your life, is it not 
true that its unhappiness has chiefly come 
from the succession of personal mortifica¬ 
tions, and almost trivial disappointments 
which the intercourse of life has brought 
you ? Great trials come at lengthened in¬ 
tervals, and we rise to breast them ; but 
it is the petty friction of our every-day 
life with one another, the jar of business 



EFFECTS REQUIRE CAUSES. 103 


or of work, the discord of the domestic 
circle, the collapse of our ambition, the 
crossing of our will or the taking down 
of our conceit, which make inward peace 
impossible. Wounded vanity, then, dis¬ 
appointed hopes, unsatisfied selfishness— 
these are the old, vulgar, universal sources 
of man’s unrest. 

Now it is obvious why Christ pointed 
out as the two chief objects for attain¬ 
ment the exact opposites of these. To 
Meekness and Lowliness these things 
simply do not exist. They cure unrest 
by making it impossible. These reme¬ 
dies do not trifle with surface symptoms; 
they strike at once at removing causes. 
The ceaseless chagrin of a self-centred 
life can be removed at once by learning 
Meekness and Lowliness of heart. He 



io4 


PAX VOBISCUM. 


who learns them is for ever proof against 
it. He lives henceforth a charmed life. 
Christianity is a fine inoculation, a trans¬ 
fusion of healthy blood into an anaemic 
or poisoned soul. No fever can attack 
a perfectly sound body; no fever of un¬ 
rest can disturb a soul which has breathed 
the air or learned the ways of Christ. 
Men sigh for the wings of a dove that 
they may fly away and be at rest. But 
flying away will not help us. “The 
Kingdom of God is within you.” We 
aspire to the top to look for Rest; it lies 
at the bottom. Water rests only when it 
gets to the lowest place. So do men. 
Hence, be lowly. The man who has 
no opinion of himself at all can never be 
hurt if others do not acknowledge him. 
Hence, be meek. He who is without 



EFFECTS REQUIRE CAUSES. 105 


expectation cannot fret if nothing comes 
to him. It is self-evident that these 
things are so. The lowly man and the 
meek man are really above all other men, 
above all other things. They dominate 
the world because they do not care for it. 
The miser does not possess gold, gold 
possesses him. But the meek possess it. 
“The meek,” said Christ; “inherit the 
earth . 5 ’ They do not buy it; they do 
not conquer it; but they inherit it. 

There are people who go about the 
world looking out for slights, and they 
are necessarily miserable, for they find 
them at every turn—especially the imag¬ 
inary ones. One has the same pity for 
such men as for the very poor. They 
are the morally illiterate. They have 
had no real education, for they have 



io6 


PAX VOBISCUM. 


never learned how to live. Few men 
know how to live. We grow up at ran¬ 
dom, carrying into mature life the merely 
animal methods and motives which we 
had as little children. And it does not 
occur to us that all this must be changed; 
that much of it must be reversed; that 
life is the finest of the Fine Arts ; that it 
has to be learned with lifelong patience, 
and that the years of our pilgrimage are 
all too short to master it triumphantly. 

Yet this is what Christianity is for— 
to teach men the Art of Life. And its 
whole curriculum lies in one word— 
“Learn of Me.” Unlike most educa¬ 
tion, this is almost purely personal; it 
is not to be had from books or lectures or 
creeds or doctrines. It is a study from 
the life. Christ never said much in mere 



EFFECTS REQUIRE CAUSES. 107 


words about the Christian Graces. He 
lived them, He was them. Yet we do 
not merely copy Him. We learn His> 
art by living with Him, like the old 
apprentices with their masters. 

Now we understand it all? Christ’s 
invitation to the weary and heavy-laden 
is a call to begin life over again upon a 
new principle—upon His own principle. 
“Watch My way of doing things,” He 
says. ‘ ‘ Follow Me. Take life as I take it. 
Be meek and lowly and you will find Rest. ’ ’ 

I do not say, remember, that the Chris¬ 
tian life to every man, or to any man, can 
be a bed of roses. No educational process 
can be this. And perhaps if some men 
knew how much was involved in the sim¬ 
ple “learn” of Christ, they would not 
enter His school with so irresponsible a 



io8 


PAX VOBISCUM. 


heart. For there is not only much to 
learn, but much to unlearn. Many men 
never go to this school at all till their 
disposition is already half ruined and cha¬ 
racter has taken on its fatal set. To learn 
arithmetic is difficult at fifty—much more 
to learn Christianity. To learn simply 
what it is to be meek and lowly, in the 
case of one who has had no lessons in 
that in childhood, may cost him half of 
what he values most on earth. Do we 
realize, for instance, that the way of 
teaching humility is generally by humil¬ 
iation ? There is probably no other 
school for it. When a man enters him¬ 
self as a pupil in such a school it means 
a very great thing. There is such Rest 
there, but there is also much Work. 

I should be wrong, even though my 



EFFECTS REQUIRE CAUSES. IO9 


theme is the brighter side, to ignore the 
cross and minimize the cost. Only it 
gives to the cross a more definite mean¬ 
ing, and a rarer value, to connect it thus 
directly and causally with the growth of 
the inner life. Our platitudes on the 
11 benefits of affliction ’ ’ are usually about 
as vague as our theories of Christian Ex¬ 
perience. u Somehow,” we believe afflic¬ 
tion does us good. But it is not a question* 
of u Somehow.’’ The result is definite, 
calculable, necessary. It is under the 
strictest law of cause and effect. The 
first effect of losing one’s fortune, for in¬ 
stance, is humiliation; and the effect of 
humiliation, as we have just seen, is to 
make one humble; and the effect of be¬ 
ing humble is to produce Rest. It is a 
roundabout way, apparently, of producing 



no 


PAX VOBISCUM. 


Rest; but Nature generally works by cir¬ 
cular processes; and it is not certain that 
there is any other way of becoming hum¬ 
ble, or of finding Rest. If a man could 
make himself humble to order, it might 
simplify matters, but we do not find that 
this happens. Hence we must all go 
through the mill. Hence death, death 
to the lower self, is the nearest gate and 
the quickest road to life. 

Yet this is only half the truth. Christ’s 
life outwardly was one of the most troubled 
lives that was ever lived: Tempest and 
tumult, tumult and tempest, the waves 
breaking over it alT the time till the worn 
body was laid in the grave. But the in¬ 
ner life was a sea of glass. The great 
calm was always there. At any moment 
you might have gone to Him and found 




EFFECTS REQUIRE CAUSES. 


Ill 


Rest. And even when the blood-hounds 
were dogging him in the streets of Jeru¬ 
salem, He turned to His disciples and 
offered them, as a last legacy, “My 
peace.” Nothing ever for a moment 
broke the serenity of Christ’s life on 
earth. Misfortune could net reach Him ; 
He had no fortune. Food, raiment, 
money—fountain-heads of half the world’s 
weariness—He simply did not care for; 
they played no part in His life ; He ‘ ‘ took 
no thought” for them. It was impos¬ 
sible to affect Him by lowering His repu¬ 
tation. He had already made himself of 
no reputation. He was dumb before in¬ 
sult. When He was reviled He reviled 
not again. In fact, there was nothing 
that the world could do to Him that could 
ruffle the surface of His spirit. 



112 


PAX VOBISCUM. 


Such living, as merely living, is alto¬ 
gether unique. It is only when we see 
what it was in Him that we can know 
what the word Rest means. It lies not 
in emotions, nor in the absence of emo¬ 
tions. It is not a hallowed feeling that 
comes over us in church. It is not some¬ 
thing that the preacher has in his voice. 
It is not in nature, or in poetry, or 
in music—though in all these there 
is soothing. It is the mind at leisure 
from itself. It is the perfect poise of the 
soul; the absolute adjustment of the in¬ 
ward man to the stress of all outward 
things-; the preparedness against every 
emergency; the stability of assured con¬ 
victions; the eternal calm of an invulner¬ 
able faith; the repose of a heart set deep 
in God. It is the mood of the man who 



EFFECTS REQUIRE CAUSES. 113 


says, with Browning, “God’s in His 
Heaven, all’s well with the world.” 

Two painters each painted a picture to 
illustrate his conception of rest. The 
first chose for his scene a still, lone lake 
among the far-off mountains. The second 
threw on his canvas a thundering water¬ 
fall, with a fragile birch tree bending over 
the foam; at the fork of a branch, almost 
wet with the cataract’s spray, a robin sat 
on its nest. The first was only Stagna¬ 
tion; the last was Rest. For in Rest 
there are always two elements—tranquil¬ 
lity and energy; silence and turbulence; 
creation and destruction; fearlessness and 
fearfulness. This it was in Christ. 

It is quite plain from all this that what¬ 
ever else He claimed to be or to do, He 
at least knew how to live. All this is the 


8 



TI 4 


PAX VOBISCUM. 


perfection of living, of living in the mere 
sense of passing through the world in the 
best way. Hence His anxiety to commu¬ 
nicate His idea of life to others. He 
came, He said, to give men life, true life, 
a more abundant life than they were liv¬ 
ing; “the life,” as the fine phrase in the 
Revised Version has it, “that is life in¬ 
deed. ’ ’ This is what He himself possessed, 
and it was this which He offers to all man¬ 
kind. And hence His direct appeal for all 
to come to Him who had not made much 
of life, who were weary and heavy laden. 
These he would teach His secret. They, 
also, should know “the life that is life 
indeed.” 




/ WHAT YOKES ARE FOR. 


HERE is still one doubt to clear up. 



JL After the statement, “Ream of 
Me,” Christ throws in the disconcerting 
qualification, “ Take My yoke upon you 
and learn of Me.” Why, if all this be true, 
does He call it a yoke ? Why, while pro¬ 
fessing to give Rest, does He with the 
next, breath whisper “ burden Is the 
Christian life, after all, what its enemies 
take it for—an additional weight to the 
already great woe of life, some extra 
punctiliousness about duty, some painful 
devotion to observances, some heavy re- 


115 



n6 


PAX VOBISCUM. 


striction and trammelling of all that is 
joyous and free in the world ? Is life not 
hard and sorrowful enough without being 
fettered with yet another yoke? 

It is astounding how so glaring a mis¬ 
understanding of this plain sentence 
should ever have passed into currency. 
Did you ever stop to ask what a yoke is 
really for? Is it to be a burden to the 
animal which wears it? It is just the 
opposite. It is to make its burden light. 
Attached to the oxen in any other way 
than by a yoke, the plough would be 
intolerable. Worked by means of a yoke, 
it is light. A yoke is not an instrument 
of torture; it is an instrument of mercy. 
It is not a malicious contrivance for mak¬ 
ing work hard; it is a gentle device to 
make hard labor light. It is not meant 



WHAT YOKES ARE FOR. 117 

to give pain, but to save pain. And yet 
men speak of the yoke of Christ as if it 
were a slavery, and look upon those who 
wear it as objects of compassion. For 
generations we have had homilies on 
“The Yoke of Christ,” some delighting 
in portraying its narrow exactions; some 
seeking in these exactions the marks of 
its divinity; others apologizing for it, 
and toning it down; still others assuring 
us that, although it be very bad, it is not 
to be compared with the positive blessings 
of Christianity. How many, especially 
among the young, has this one mistaken 
phrase driven for ever away from the 
kingdom of God? Instead of making 
Christ attractive, it makes Him out a 
taskmaster, narrowing life by petty re¬ 
strictions, calling for self-denial where 



n8 


PAX VOBISCUM. 


none is necessary, making misery a vir¬ 
tue under the plea that it is the yoke of 
Christ, and happiness criminal because it 
now and then evades it. According to 
this conception, Christians are at best the 
victims of a depressing fate; their life is 
a penance; and their hope for the next 
world purchased by a slow martyrdom in 
this. 

The mistake has arisen from taking the 
word “yoke” here in the same sense as 
in the expressions ‘ ‘ under the yoke, ’ ’ or 
“wear the yoke in his youth.” Butin 
Christ’s illustration it is not the jugum 
of the Roman soldier, but the simple 
“harness” or “ox-collar” of the East¬ 
ern peasant. It is the literal wooden 
yoke which He, with His own hands in 
the carpenter shop, had probably often 



WHAT YOKES ARE FOR. 119 

made. He knew the difference between 
a smooth yoke and a rough one, a bad fit 
and a good fit; the difference also it made 
to the patient animal which had to wear 
it. The rough yoke galled, and the bur¬ 
den was heavy; the smooth yoke caused 
no pain, and the load was lightly drawn. 
The badly-fitted harness was a misery; 
the well-fitted collar was “easy.” 

And what was the “ burden ”? It was 
not some special burden laid upon the 
Christian, some unique infliction that they 
alone must bear. It was what all men 
bear. It was simply life, human life 
itself, the general burden of life which 
all must carry with them from the cradle 
to the grave. Christ saw that men took 
life painfully. To some it was a weari¬ 
ness, to others a failure, to many a trag- 



120 


PAX VOBISCUM. 


edy, to all a struggle and a pain. How 
to carry this burden of life had been the 
whole world’s problem. It is still the 
whole world’s problem. And here is 
Christ’s solution: “Carry it as I do. 
Take life as I take it. Look at it from 
My point of view. Interpret it upon My 
principles. Take My yoke and learn of 
Me, and you will find it easy. For My 
yoke is easy, works easily, sits right upon 
the shoulders, and therefore My burden is 
light.” 

There is no suggestion here that re¬ 
ligion will absolve any man from bearing 
burdens. That would be to absolve him 
from living, since it is life itself that is 
the burden. What Christianity does pro¬ 
pose is to make it tolerable. Christ’s 
yoke is simply His secret for the allevia- 



WHAT YOKES ARE FOR. 


121 


tion of human life, His prescription for 
the best and happiest method of living. 
Men harness themselves to the work and 
stress of the world in clumsy and un¬ 
natural ways. The harness they put on 
is antiquated. A rough, ill-fitted collar 
at the best, they make its strain and 
friction past enduring, by placing it 
where the neck is most sensitive; and 
by mere continuous irritation this sensi¬ 
tiveness increases until the whole nature 
is quick and sore. 

This is the origin, among other things, 
of a disease called “touchiness”—a dis¬ 
ease which, in spite of its innocent name, 
is one of the gravest sources of restless¬ 
ness in the world. Touchiness, when it 
becomes chronic, is a morbid condition 
of the inward disposition. It is self-love 



122 


PAX VOBISCUM. 


inflamed to the acute point; conceit, 
with a hair-trigger . The cure is to shift 
the yoke to some other place ; to let men 
and things touch us through some new 
and perhaps as yet unused part of our 
nature; to become meek and lowly in 
heart while the old nature is becoming 
numb from want of use. It is the beau¬ 
tiful work of Christianity everywhere to 
adjust the burden of life to those who 
bear it, and them to it. It has a per¬ 
fectly miraculous gift of healing. With¬ 
out doing any violence to human nature 
it sets it right with life, harmonizing it 
with all surrounding things, and restor¬ 
ing those who are jaded with the fatigue 
and dust of the world to a new grace 
of living. In the mere matter of alter¬ 
ing the perspective of life and changing 



WHAT YOKES ARE FOR. 


123 


the proportion of things, its function in 
lightening the care of man is altogether 
its own. The weight of a load depends 
upon the attraction of the earth. But 
suppose the attraction of the earth were 
removed? A ton on some other planet, 
where the attraction of gravity is less, 
does not weigh half a ton. Now Chris¬ 
tianity removes the attraction of the 
earth, and this is one way in which it 
diminishes men’s burden. It makes, 
them citizens of another world. What 
was a ton yesterday is not half a ton 
to-day. So without changing one’s cir¬ 
cumstances, merely by offering a wider 
horizon and a different standard, it alters 
the whole aspect of the world. 

Christianity as Christ taught is the 
truest philosophy of life ever spoken. 



124 


PAX VOBISCUM. 


But let us be quite sure when we speak 
of Christianity that we mean Christ’s 
Christianity. Other versions are either 
caricatures, or exaggerations, or misun¬ 
derstandings, or shortsighted and surface 
readings. For the most part their at¬ 
tainment is hopeless and the results 
wretched. But I care not who the per¬ 
son is, or through what vale of tears he 
has passed, or is about to pass, there is 
a new life for him along this path. 




HOW FRUITS GROW. 


W ERE Rest my subject, there are 
other things I should wish to say 
about it, and other kinds of Rest of which 
I should like to speak. But that is not 
my subject. My theme is that the Chris¬ 
tian experiences are not the work of 
magic, but come under the law of Cause 
and Effect. And I have chosen Rest only 
as a single illustration of the working of 
that principle. If there were time I 
might next run over all the Christian 
experiences in turn, and show how the 
same wide law applies to each. But I 

125 



126 


PAX VOBISCUM. 


think it may serve the better purpose if I 
leave this further exercise to yourselves. 
I know no Bible study that you will find 
more full of fruit, or which will take you 
nearer to the ways of God, or make the 
Christian life itself more solid or more 
sure. I shall add only a single other 
illustration of what I mean, before I 
close. 

Where does Joy come from ? I knew a 

Sunday scholar whose conception of Joy 

was that it was a thing made in lumps 
% 

and kept somewhere in Heaven, and that 
when people prayed for it, pieces were 
somehow let down and fitted into their 
souls. I am not sure that views as gross 
and material are not often held by people 
who ought to be wiser. In reality, Joy is 
as much a matter of Cause and Effect as 



HOW FRUITS GROW. 


127 


pain. No one can get Joy by merely ask¬ 
ing for it. It is one of the ripest fruits 
of the Christian life, and, like all fruits, 
must be grown. There is a very clever 
trick in India called the mango-trick. A 
seed is put in the ground and covered up, 
and after divers incantations a full-blown 
mango-bush appears within five minutes. 
I never met any one who knew how the 
thing was done, but I never met any one 
who believed it to be anything else than 
a conjuring-trick. The world is pretty 
unanimous now in its belief in the order¬ 
liness of Nature. Men may not know 
how fruits grow, but they do know that 
they cannot grow in five minutes. Some 
lives have not even a stalk on which fruits 
could hang, even if they did grow in five 
minutes. Some have never planted one 



128 


PAX VOBISCUM. 


sound seed of Joy in all their lives: and 
others who may have planted a germ or 
two have lived so little in sunshine that 
they never could come to maturity. 

Whence, then, is joy ? Christ put His 
teaching upon this subject into one of the 
most exquisite of His parables. I should 
in any instance have appealed to His 
teaching here, as in the case of Rest, 
for I do not wish you to think I am* 
speaking words of my own. But it so 
happens that He has dealt with it in 
words of unusual fulness. 

I need not recall the whole illustration. 
It is the parable of the Vine. Did you 
ever think why Christ spoke that parable? 
He did not merely throw it into space as 
a fine illustration of general truths. It 
was not simply a statement of the mystical 



HOW FRUITS GROW. 


129 


union, and the doctrine of an indwelling 
Christ. It was that; but it was more. 
After He had said it, He did what was 
not an unusual thing when he was teach¬ 
ing His greatest lessons. He turned to 
the disciples and said He would tell them 
why He had spoken it. It was to tell 
them how to get Joy. “These things 
have I spoken unto you,” He said, “ that 
My Joy might remain in you and that 
your Joy might be full.” It was a pur¬ 
posed and deliberate communication of 
His secret of Happiness. 

Go back over these verses, then, and 
you will find the Causes of this Effect, 
the spring, and the only spring, out of 
which true Happiness comes. I am not 
going to analyze them in detail. I ask 
you to enter into the words for your- 



130 


PAX VOBISCUM. 


selves. Remember, in the first place, 
that the Vine was the Eastern symbol 
of Joy. It was its fruit that made glad, 
the heart of man. Yet, however inno¬ 
cent that gladness—for the expressed 
juice of the grape was the common 
drink at every peasant’s board—the glad¬ 
ness was only a gross and passing thing. 
This was not true happiness, and the 
vine of the Palestine vineyards was not 
the true vine. Christ was ‘ 1 the true 
Vine.” Here, then, is the ultimate 
source of Joy. Through whatever me¬ 
dia it reaches us, all true Joy and Glad¬ 
ness find their source in Christ. By 
this, of course, is not meant that the 
actual Joy experienced is transferred 
from Christ’s nature, or is something 
passed on from Him to us. What is 



HOW FRUITS GROW. 


131 

passed on is His method of getting it. 
There is, indeed, a sense in which we 
can share another’s joy or another’s sor¬ 
row. But that is another matter. Christ 
is the source of Joy to men in the sense 
in which He is the source of Rest. His 
people share His life, and therefore share 
its consequences, and one of these is Joy. 
His method of living is one that in the 
nature of things produces Joy. When 
He spoke of His Joy remaining with us, 
He meant in part that the causes which 
produced it should continue to act. His 
followers, that is to say, by repeating 
His life would experience its accompani¬ 
ments. His Joy, His kind of Joy, would 
remain with them. 

The medium through which this Joy 
comes is next explained: “He that 



132 


PAX VOBISCUM. 


abideth in Me, the same bringeth forth 
much fruit.” Fruit first, Joy next; the 
one the cause or medium of the other. 
Fruit-bearing is the necessary antece¬ 
dent ; Joy both the necessary 'consequent 
and the necessary accompaniment. It 
lay partly in the bearing fruit, partly 
in the fellowship which made that possi¬ 
ble. Partly, that is to say, Joy lay in 
mere constant living in Christ’s pres¬ 
ence, with all that that implied of 
peace, of shelter, and of love; partly in 
the influence of that Fife upon mind 
and character and will; and partly in 
the inspiration to live and work for 
others, with all that that brings of self¬ 
riddance and Joy in others’ gain. All 
these, in different ways and at different 
times, are sources of pure Happiness. 



HOW FRUITS GROW. 


m 


Even the simplest of them—to do good 
to other people—is an instant and in¬ 
fallible specific. There is no mystery 
about Happiness whatever. Put in the 
right ingredients and it must come out. 
He that abideth in Him will bring forth 
much fruit; and bringing forth much 
fruit is Happiness. The infallible re¬ 
ceipt for Happiness, then, is to do good; 
and the infallible receipt for doing good 
is to abide in Christ. The surest proof 
that all this is a plain matter of Cause 
and Effect is that men may try every 
other conceivable way of finding Happi¬ 
ness, and they will fail. Only the right 
cause in each case can produce the right 
effect. 

Then the Christian experiences are 
our own making? In the same sense 



I 34 


PAX VOBISCUM. 


in which grapes are our own making, 
and no more. All fruits grow —whether 
they grow in the soil or in the soul; 
whether they are the fruits of the wild 
grape or of the True Vine. No man 
can make things grow. He can get 
them to grow by arranging all the cir¬ 
cumstances and fulfilling all the condi¬ 
tions. But the growing is done by God. 
Causes and effects are eternal arrange¬ 
ments, set in the constitution of the 
world; fixed beyond man’s ordering. 
What man can do is to place himself 
in the midst of a chain of sequences. 
Thus he can get things to grow: thus 
he himself can grow. But the grower 
is the Spirit of God. 

What more need I add but this—test 
the method by experiment. Do not im- 



HOW FRUITS GROW. 


135 


agine that you have got these things be¬ 
cause you know how to get them. As 
well try to feed upon a cookery book. 
But I think I can promise that if you 
try in this simple and natural way, you 
will not fail. Spend the time you have 
spent in sighing for fruits in fulfilling the 
conditions of their growth. The fruits 
will come, must come. We have hitherto 
paid immense attention to effects , to the 
mere experiences themselves; we have 
described them, extolled them, advised 
them, prayed for them—done everything 
but find out what caused them. Hence¬ 
forth let us deal with causes. u To be,” 
says Lotze, “ is to be in relations. ’ ’ About 
every other method of living the Christian 
life there is an uncertainty. About every 
other method of acquiring the Christian 



136 


PAX VOBISCUM. 


experiences there is a “perhaps.’’ But 
in so far as this method is the way of 
nature, it cannot fail. Its guarantee is 
the laws of the universe, and these are 
“the Hands of the Living God.” 


THE TRUE VINE. 

“ I am the true vine, and my Father is 
the husbandman. Every branch in me 
that beareth not fruit he taketh away: 
and every branch that beareth fruit, he 
purgeth it, that it may bring forth more 
fruit. Now ye are clean through the 
word which I have spoken unto you. 
Abide in me, and I in you.. As the 




THE TRUE VINE. 


137 


branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except 
it abide in the vine; no more can ye, 
except ye abide in me. I am the vine, 
ye are the branches: he that abideth in 
me, and I in him, the same bringeth 
forth much fruit: for without me ye can 
do nothing. If a man abide not in me, 
he is cast forth as a branch, and is with¬ 
ered ; and men gather them, and cast 
them into the fire, and they are burned. 
If ye abide in me, and my word abide in 
you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it 
shall be done unto you. Herein is my 
Father glorified, that ye may bear much 
fruit; so ye shall be my disciples. As 
the Father hath loved me, so have I 
loved you: continue ye in my love. If 
ye keep my commandments, ye shall 
abide in my love; even as I have kept 



PAX VOBISCUM. 


138 

my Father’s commandments, and abide 
in his love. These things have I spoken 
unto you, that my joy might remain in 
you, and that your joy might be full.” 




THE CHANGED LIFE 


' 

* 



PREFACE. 


J AST autumn, in a book-shop in Cali¬ 
fornia, the author found a little book 
with his name upon the title-page— 
a book which he did not know existed; 
which he never wrote ; nor baptized with 
the title which it bore. This stray publi¬ 
cation—taken from shorthand notes of a 
spoken Address—he does not grudge. 
Already, it seems, it has done its small 
measure of good. But owing to the im¬ 
perfections which it contains it has been 
thought right to issue a more complete 
edition. 


141 



142 


PREFACE. 


The theme, like its predecessors in this 
series, represents but a single aspect of its 
great subject—the man-ward side. The 
light and shade is apportioned with this 
in view. And the reader’s kind attention 
is asked to this limitation, lest he wonder 
at points being left in shadow which 
theology has always, and rightly, taught 
us to emphasize. 

It was the hearing of a simple talk by 
a friend to some plain people in a High¬ 
land deer-forest which first called the 
author’s attention to the practicalness of 
this solution of the cardinal problem of 
Christian experience. What follows 
owes a large debt to that Sunday 
morning. 



We all 

With unveiled face 
Reflecting 
As a Mirror 
The Glory of the Eord 
Are transformed 
Into the same image 
From Glory to Glory 
Even as from the Ford 
The Spirit. 



THE CHANGED LIFE. 


“I protest that if some great Power would 
agree to make me always think what is true 
and do what is right, on condition of being 
turned into a sort of clock and wound up every 
morning, I should instantly close with the 
offer. ’ ’ 



k HESE are the words of Mr. Huxley. 


The infinite desirability, the infin¬ 
ite difficulty of being good—the theme 
is as old as humanity. The man does 
not live from whose deeper being the 

same confession has not risen, or who 
10 145 



146 


THE CHANGED LIFE. 


would not give his all to-morrow, if he 
could “close with the offer” of becoming 
a better man. 

I propose to make that offer now. In 
all seriousness, without being “turned 
into a sort of clock,” the end can be 
attained. Under the right conditions 
it is as natural for character to become 
beautiful as for a flower; and if on God’s 
earth there is not some machinery for 
effecting it, the supreme gift to the world 
has been forgotten. This is simply what 
man was made for. With Browning: “I 
say that Man was made to grow, not 
stop.” Or in the deeper words of an 
older Book: “Whom He did foreknow, 
He also did predestinate ... to be con¬ 
formed to the Image of His Son.” 

Uet me begin by naming, and in part 



THE CHANGED DIKE. 


147 


discarding, some processes in vogue 
already, for producing better lives. 
These processes are far from wrong; 
in their place they may even be essen¬ 
tial. One ventures to disparage them 
only because they do not turn out the 
most perfect possible work. 

The first imperfect method is to rely 
on Resolution. In will-power, in mere 
spasms of earnestness there is no salva¬ 
tion. Struggle, effort, even agony, have 
their place in Christianity, as we shall 
see; but this is not where they come in. 
In mid-Atlantic the other day; the Etru¬ 
ria, in which I was sailing, suddenly 
stopped. Something had gone wrong 
with the engines. There were five hun¬ 
dred able-bodied men on board the ship. 
Do you think that if we had gathered 



148 THE CHANGED LIFE* 

together and pushed against the mast 
we could have pushed it on ? When one 
attempts to sanctify himself by effort, he 
is trying to make his boat go by pushing 
against the mast. He is like a drowning 
man trying to lift himself out of the 
water by pulling at the hair of his own 
head. Christ held up this method almost 
to ridicule when He said, “Which of you 
by taking thought can add a cubit to his 
stature?” The one redeeming feature of 
the self-sufficient method is this—that 
those who try it find out almost at once 
that it will not gain the goal. 

Another experimenter says: “ But that 
is not my method. I have seen the folly 
of a mere wild struggle in the dark. I 
work on a principle. My plan is not to 
waste power on random effort, but to con- 



THE CHANGED LIFE. 


149 


centrate on a single sin. By taking one 
at a time, and crucifying it steadily, I 
hope in the end to extirpate all.” To 
this, unfortunately, there are four objec¬ 
tions: For one thing, life is too short; the 
name of sin is Legion. For another 
thing, to deal with individual sins is to 
leave the rest of the nature for the time 
untouched. In the third place, a single 
combat with a special sin does not affect 
the root and spring of the disease. If 
one only of the channels of sin be ob¬ 
structed, experience points to an almost 
certain overflow through some other part 
of the nature. Partial conversion is al¬ 
most always accompanied by such moral 
leakage, for the pent-up energies accu¬ 
mulate to the bursting point, and the last 
state of that soul may be worse than the 



THE CHANGED LIFE. 


150 

first. In the last place, religion does not 
consist in negatives, in stopping this sin 
and stopping that. The perfect character 
can never be produced with a pruning- 
knife. 

But a third protests: “So be it. I 
make no attempt to stop sins one by one. 
My method is just the opposite. I copy 
the virtues one by one.” The difficulty 
about the copying method is that it is apt 
to be mechanical. One can always tell 
an engraving from a picture, an artificial 
flower from a real flower. To copy vir¬ 
tues one by one has somewhat the same 
effect as eradicating the vices one by one; 
the temporary result is an overbalanced 
and incongruous character. Some one 
defines a prig as “ a creature that is over¬ 
fed for its size.” One sometimes finds 



THE CHANGED LIFE. 


151 

Christians of this species—over-fed on 
one side of their nature, but dismally 
thin and starved-looking on the other. 
The result, for instance, of copying Hu¬ 
mility, and adding it on to an otherwise 
worldly life, is simply grotesque. A 
rabid Temperance advocate, for the same 
reason, is often the poorest of creatures, 
flourishing on a single virtue, and quite 
oblivious that his Temperance is making 
a worse man of him and not a better. 
These are examples of fine virtues spoiled 
by association with mean companions. 
Character is a unity, and all the virtues 
must advance together to make the per¬ 
fect man. This method of sanctification, 
nevertheless, is in the true direction. It 
is only in the details of execution that it 
fails. 



152 


THE CHANGED LIFE. 


A fourth method I need scarcely men¬ 
tion, for it is a variation on those already 
named. It is the very young man’s 
method"; and the pure earnestness of it 
njakes it almost desecration to touch it. 
It is to keep a private note-book with 
columns for the days of the week, and a 
list of virtues with spaces against each 
for marks. This, with many stem rules 
for preface, is stored away in a secret 
place, and from time to time, at night¬ 
fall, the soul is arraigned before it as be¬ 
fore a private judgment bar. This living 
by code was Franklin’s method; and I 
suppose thousands more could tell how 
they had hung up in their bedrooms, or 
hid in lock-fast drawers, the rules which 
one solemn day they drew up to shape 
their lives. This method is not erron- 



THE CHANGED LIFE. 


153 


eous, only somehow its success is poor. 
You bear me witness that it fails. And 
it fails generally for very matter-of-fact 
reasons—most likely because one day we 
forget the rules. 

All these methods that have been named 
—the self-sufficient method, the self-cruci¬ 
fixion method, the mimetic method, and 
the diary method—are perfectly human, 
perfectly natural, perfectly ignorant, and, 
as they stand, perfectly inadequate. It 
is not argued, I repeat, that they must 
be abandoned. Their harm is rather that 
they distract attention from the true work¬ 
ing method, and secure a fair result at the 
expense of the perfect one. What that 
perfect method is we shall now go on to 
ask. 




THE FORMULA OF SANCTI¬ 
FICATION. 


FORMULA, a receipt, for Sanctifi¬ 
cation—can one seriously speak of 
this mighty change as if the process were 
as definite as for the production of so 
many volts of electricity? It is impos¬ 
sible to doubt it. Shall a mechanical 
experiment succeed infallibly, and the 
one vital experiment of humanity remain 
a chance ? Is corn to grow by method, 
and character by caprice? If we cannot 
calculate to a certainty that the forces of 

154 



FORMULA OF SANCTIFICATION. 155 


religion will do their work, then is relig¬ 
ion vain. And if we cannot express the 
law of these forces in simple words, then 
is Christianity not the world’s religion, 
but the world’s conundrum. 

Where, then, shall one look for such a 
formula ? Where one would look for any 
formula—among the text-books. And 
if we turn to the text-books of Chris¬ 
tianity we shall find a formula for this 
problem as clear and precise as any in the 
mechanical sciences. If this simple rule, 
moreover, be but followed fearlessly, it 
will yield the result of a perfect character 
as surely as any result that is guaranteed 
by the laws of nature. The finest expres¬ 
sion of this rule in Scripture, or indeed in 
any literature, is probably one drawn up 
and condensed into a single verse by Paul. 



THE CHANGED LIFE. 


156 

You will find it in a letter—the second to 
the Corinthians—written by him to some 
Christian people who, in a city which was 
a byword for depravity and licentiousness, 
were seeking the higher life. To see the 
point of the words we must take them 
from the immensely improved rendering 
of the Revised translation, for the older 
Version in this case greatly obscures the 
sense. They are these: “We all, with 
unveiled face reflecting as a mirror the 
glory of the Lord, are transformed into 
the same image from glory to glory, even 
as from the Lord the Spirit.” 

Now observe at the outset the entire 
contradiction of all our previous efforts, 
in the simple passive 1 ‘ we are trans¬ 
formed. ” We are changed , as the Old Ver¬ 
sion has it—we do not change ourselves. 



FORMULA OF SANCTIFICATION. 157 


No man can change himself. Through¬ 
out the New Testament you will find that 
wherever these moral and spiritual trans¬ 
formations are described the verbs are in 
the passive. Presently it will be pointed 
out that there is a rationale in this; but 
meantime do not toss these words aside 
as if this passivity denied all human effort 
or ignored intelligible law. What is im¬ 
plied for the soul here is no more than is 
everywhere claimed for the body. In 
physiology the verbs describing the pro¬ 
cesses of growth are in the passive. 
Growth is not voluntary; it takes place, 
it happens, it is wrought upon matter. 
So here. u Ye must be born again ”— 
we cannot born ourselves. “Be not 
conformed to this world, but be ye trans¬ 
formed ”—we are subjects to a trans- 



158 


THE CHANGED LIFE. 


forming influence, we do not transform 
ourselves. Not more certain is it that it is 
something outside the thermometer that 
produces a change in the thermometer, 
than it is something outside the soul of 
man that produces a moral change upon 
him. That he must be susceptible to 
that change, that he must be a party to 
it, goes without saying; but that neither 
his aptitude nor his will can produce it, 
is equally certain. 

Obvious as it ought to seem, this 
may be to some an almost startling rev¬ 
elation. The change we have been 
striving after is not to be produced by 
any more striving after. It is to be 
wrought upon us by the moulding of 
hands beyond our own. As the branch 
ascends, and the bud bursts, and the 




FORMULA OF SANCTIFICATION. 159 


fruit reddens under the co-operation of 
influences from the outside air, so man 
rises to the higher stature under invisi¬ 
ble pressures from without. The radical 
defect of all our former methods of 
sanctification was the attempt to gener¬ 
ate from within that which can only 
be wrought upon us from without. Ac¬ 
cording to the first Taw of Motion: 
Every body continues in its state of 
rest, or of uniform motion in a straight 
line, except in so far as it may be com¬ 
pelled by impressed forces to change that 
state. This is also a first law of Chris¬ 
tianity. Every man’s character remains 
as it is, or continues in the direction in 
which it is going, until it is compelled 
by impressed forces to change that state. 

Our failure has been the failure to put 
13 



i6o 


THE CHANGED LIFE. 


ourselves in the way of the impressed 
forces. There is a clay, and there is a 
Potter; we have tried to get the clay 
to mould the clay. 

Whence, then, these pressures, and 
where this Potter? The answer of the 
formula is “By reflecting as a mirror 
the glory of the Lord we are changed.’’ 
But this is not very clear. What is 
the “glory” of the Lord, and how can 
mortal man reflect it, and how can that 
act as an u impressed force ’ ’ in mould¬ 
ing him to a nobler form? The word 
“glory”—the word which has to bear 
the weight of holding those ‘ ‘ impressed 
forces ”—is a stranger in current speech, 
and our first duty is to seek out its 
equivalent in working English. It sug¬ 
gests at first a radiance of some kind, 



FORMULA OF SANCTIFICATION. l6l 


something dazzling or glittering, some 
halo such as the old masters loved to 
paint round the heads of their Ecce 
Homos. But that is paint, mere matter, 
the visible symbol of some unseen thing. 
What is that unseen thing? It is that 
of all unseen things the most radiant, 
the most beautiful, the most Divine, and 
that is Character, On earth, in Heaven, 
there is nothing so great, so glorious as \ 
this. The word has many meanings; 
in ethics it can have but one. Glory 
is character, and nothing less, and it can 
be nothing more. The earth is “full 
of the glory of the Lord,” because it 
is full of His character. The “Beauty 
of the Lord” is character. “The efful¬ 
gence of His Glory ” is character. The 

Glory of the Only Begotten” is charac- 
11 



i 62 


THE CHANGED LIFE. 


ter, the character which is “fulness of 
grace and truth.” And when God told 
His people His name He simply gave 
them His character, His character which 
was Himself: “And the Lord proclaimed 
the Name of the Lord . . . the Lord, 
the Lord God, merciful and gracious, 
long-suffering and abundant in goodness 
and truth.” Glory then is not some¬ 
thing intangible, or ghostly, or transcen¬ 
dental. If it were this how could Paul 
ask men to reflect it? Stripped of its 
physical enswathement it is Beauty, 
moral and spiritual^ Beauty, Beauty in¬ 
finitely real, infinitely exalted, yet infin¬ 
itely near and infinitely communicable. 

With this explanation read over the 
sentence once more in paraphrase: We 
all reflecting as a mirror the character 



FORMULA OF SANCTIFICATION. 163 


of Christ are transformed into the same 
Image from character to character—from 
a poor character to a better one, from a 
better one to one a little better still, 
from that to one still more complete, 
until by slow degrees the Perfect Image 
is attained. Here the solution of the 
problem of sanctification is compressed 
into a sentence: Reflect the character 
of Christ, and you will become like 
Christ. 

All men are mirrors—that is the first 
law on which this formula is based. One 
of the aptest descriptions of a human 
being is that he is a mirror. As we sat 
at table to-night the world in which each 
of us lived and moved throughout this 
day was focussed in the room. What we 
saw as we looked at one another was not 



164 


THE CHANGED LIFE. 


one another, but one another’s world. 
We were an arrangement of mirrors. 
The scenes we saw were all reproduced ; 
the people we met walked to and fro; 
they spoke, they bowed, they passed us 
by, did everything over again as if it had 
been real. When we talked, we were but 
looking at our own mirror and describing 
what flitted across it; our listening was 
not hearing, but seeing—we but looked 
on our neighbor’s mirror. All human 
intercourse is a seeing of reflections. I 
meet a stranger in a railway carriage. 
The cadence of his first word tells me he 
is English, and comes from Yorkshire. 
Without knowing it he has reflected his 
birthplace, his parents, and the long his¬ 
tory of their race. Even physiologically 
he is a mirror. His second sentence 



FORMULA OF SANCTIFICATION. 1 65 

records that he is a politician, and a 
faint inflexion in the way he pronounces 
The Times reveals his party. In his next 
remarks I see reflected a whole world of 
experiences. The books he has read, the 
people he has met, the influences that 
have played upon him and made him the 
man he is—these are all registered there 
by a pen which lets nothing pass, and 
whose writing can never be blotted out. 
What I am reading in him meantime he 
also is reading in me; and before the 
journey is over we could half write each 
other’s lives. Whether we like it or not, 
we live in glass houses. The mind, the 
memory, the soul, is simply a vast cham¬ 
ber panelled with looking-glass. And 
upon this miraculous arrangement and 
endowment depends the capacity of mor- 



THE CHANGED LIFE. 


166 

tal souls to “reflect the character of the 
Eord.” 

But this is not all. If all these varied 
reflections from our so-called secret life 
are patent to the world, how close the 
writing, how complete the record, within 
the soul itself? For the influences Ve 
meet are not simply held for a moment 
on the polished surface and thrown off 
again into space. Each is retained where 
first it fell, and stored up in the soul for 
ever. 

This law of Assimilation is the second, 
and by far the most impressive truth 
which underlies the formula of sancti¬ 
fication—the truth that men are not 
only mirrors, but that these mirrors, so 
far from being mere reflectors of the 
fleeting things they see, transfer into 



FORMULA OF SANCTIFICATION. 167 


their own inmost .substance, and hold in 
permanent preservation, the things that 
they reflect. No one knows how the 
soul can hold these things. No one 
knows how the miracle is 'done. No 
phenomenon in nature, no process in 
chemistry, no chapter in necromancy 
can even help us to begin to understand 
this amazing operation. For, think of 
it, the past is not only focussed there, 
in a man’s soul, it is there. How could 
it be reflected from there if it were not 
there ? All things that he has ever seen, 
known, felt, believed of the surrounding 
world are now within him, have become 
part of him, in part are him—he has 
.been changed into their image. He 
may deny it, he may resent it, but they 
are there. They do not adhere to him, 



168 


THE CHANGED UFE. 


they are transfused through him. He 
cannot alter or rub them out. They are 
not in his memory, they are in him . 
His soul is as they have filled it, made 
it, left it. These things, these books, 
these events, these influences are his 
makers. In their hands are life and 
death, beauty and deformity. When 
once the image or likeness of any of 
these is fairly presented to the soul, no 
power on earth can hinder two things 
happening—it must be absorbed into 
the soul, and for ever reflected back 
again from character. 

Upon these astounding yet perfectly 
obvious psychological facts, Paul bases 
his doctrine of sanctification. He sees 
that character is a thing built up by 
slow degrees, that it is hourly chang- 



FORMULA OF SANCTIFICATION. 169 

ing for better or for worse according to 
the images which flit across it. One 
step further and the whole length and 
breadth of the application of these ideas 
to the central problem of religion will 
stand before us. 





THE ALCHEMY OF INFLU¬ 
ENCE. 


J F events change men, much more per¬ 
sons. . No man can meet another on 
the street without making some mark 
upon him. We say we exchange words 
when we meet; what we exchange is 
souls. And when intercourse is very 
close and very frequent, so complete is 
this exchange that recognizable bits of 
[ the one soul begin to show in the other’s 
nature, and the second is conscious of a 
similar and growing debt to the first. 

170 



THE ALCHEMY OF INFLUENCE. 171 


This mysterious approximating of two 
souls who has not witnessed ? Who has 
not watched some old couple come down 
life’s pilgrimage hand in hand, with such 
gentle trust and joy in one another that 
their very faces wore the self-same look ? 
These were not two souls; it was a com¬ 
posite soul. It did not matter to which 
of the two you spoke, you would have 
said the same words to either. It was 
quite indifferent' which replied, each 
would have said the same. * Half a 
century’s reflecting had told upon them ; 
they were changed into the same image. 
It is the Haw of Influence that we be - 
come like those whom we habitually ad¬ 
mire: these had become like because 
they habitually admired. Through all 
the range of literature, of history, and 



172 


THE CHANGED LIFE. 


biography this law presides. Men are 
all mosaics of other men. There was 
a savor of David about Jonathan and 
a savor of Jonathan about David. Jean 
Valjean, in the masterpiece of Victor 
Hugo, is Bishop Bienvenu risen from 
the dead. Metempsychosis is a fact. 
George Eliot’s message to the world 
was that men and women make men 
and women. The Family, the cradle 
of mankind, has no meaning apart from 
this. Society itself is nothing but a 
rallying point for these omnipotent forces 
to do their work. On the doctrine of In¬ 
fluence, in short, the whole vast pyramid 
of humanity is built. 

But it was reserved for Paul to make 
the supreme application of the Eaw of 
Influence. It was a tremendous infer- 



THE ALCHEMY OF INFLUENCE. 173 


ence to make, but he never hesitated. 
He himself was a changed man; he 
knew exactly what had done it; it was 
Christ. On the Damascus road they 
met, and from that hour his life was 
absorbed in His. The effect could not 
but follow—on words, on deeds, on career, 
on creed. The ‘ ‘ impressed forces ’ ’ did 
their vital work. He became like Him 
Whom he habitually loved. ‘ ‘ So we 
all,” he writes, “reflecting as a mirror 
the glory of Christ, are changed into 
the same image. ” 

Nothing could be more simple, more 
intelligible, more natural, more super¬ 
natural. It is an analogy from an every¬ 
day fact. Since we are what we are by 
the impacts of those who surround us, 
those who surround themselves with the 



i?4 


THE CHANGED EIFE. 


highest will be those who change into 
the highest. There are some men and 
some women in whose company we are 
always at our best. While with them 
we cannot think mean thoughts or speak 
ungenerous words. Their mere presence 
is elevation, purification, sanctity- All 
the best stops in our nature are drawn 
out by their intercourse, and we find a 
music in our souls that was never there 
before. Suppose even that influence pro¬ 
longed through a month, a year, a life¬ 
time, and what could not life become? 
Here, even on the common plane of life, 
talking our language, walking our streets, 
working side by side,- are sanctifiers* of 
souls; here, breathing through common 
clay, is Heaven; here, energies charged 
even through a temporal medium with 



THE ALCHEMY OF INFLUENCE. 1 75 


the virtue of regeneration. If to live 
with men, diluted to the millionth de¬ 
gree with the virtue of the Highest, can 
exalt and purify the nature, what bounds 
can be set to the influence of Christ ? To 
live with Socrates—with unveiled face— 
must have made one wise ; with Aristides, 
just. Francis of Assisi must have made 
one gentle; Savonarola, strong. But to 
have lived with Christ? To have lived 
with Christ must have made one like 
Christ; that is to say, A Christian. 

As a matter of fact, to live with Christ 
did produce this effect. It produced it in 
the case of Paul. And during Christ’s 
lifetime the experiment was tried in an 
even more startling form. A few raw, 
unspiritual, uninspiring men, were ad¬ 
mitted to the inner circle of His friend- 



176 


THE CHANGED LIFE. 


ship. The change began at once. Day 
by day we can almost see the first dis¬ 
ciples grow. First there steals over them 
the faintest possible adumbration of His 
character, and occasionally, very occa¬ 
sionally, they do a thing or say a thing 
that they could not have done or said had 
they not been living there. Slowly the 
spell of His Life deepens. Reach after 
reach of their nature is overtaken, thawed, 
subjugated, sanctified. Their manners 
soften, their words become more gentle, 
their conduct more unselfish. As swal¬ 
lows who have found a summer, as frozen 
buds the spring, their starved humanity 
bursts into a fuller life. They do not 
know how it is, but they are different 
men. One day they find themselves like 
their Master, going about and doing good. 



THE ALCHEMY OP INFLUENCE. 177 


To themselves it is unaccountable, but 
they cannot do otherwise. They were 
not told to do it, it came to them to do it. 
But the people who watch them know 
well how to account for it—“They have 
been,” they whisper, “with Jesus.” Al¬ 
ready even, the mark and seal of His 
character is upon them—“They have 
been with Jesus.” Unparalleled phe¬ 
nomenon, that these poor fishermen should 
remind other men of Christ! Stupendous 
victory and mystery of regeneration that 
mortal men should suggest to the world, 
God! 

There is something almost melting in 
the way His contemporaries, and John 
especially, speak of the influence of 
Christ. John lived himself in daily won- « 

der at Him; he was overpowered, over- 
12 



178 


THE CHANGED LIFE. 


awed, entranced, transfigured. To liis 
mind it was impossible for any one to 
come under this influence and ever be 
the same again. “Whosoever abideth in 
Him sinneth ijot,” he said. It was in¬ 
conceivable that he should sin, as in¬ 
conceivable as that ice should live in a 
burning sun, or darkness coexist with 
noon. If any one did sin, it was to John 
the simple proof that he could never have 
met Christ. “Whosoever sinneth,” he 
exclaims, 1 ‘ hath not seen Him , neither 
known Him." Sin was abashed in this 
Presence. Its roots withered. Its sway 
and victory were for ever at an end. 

But these were His contemporaries. It 
was easy for them to be influenced by 
Him, for they were every day and all the 
day together. But how can we mirror 



THE ALCHEMY OF INFLUENCE. 1 79 


that which we have never seen? How 
can all this stupendous result be pro¬ 
duced by a Memory, by the scantiest of 
all Biographies, by One who lived and 
left this earth eighteen hundred years 
ago ? How can modern men to-day make 
Christ, the absent Christ, their most con¬ 
stant companion still? The answer is 
that Friendship is a spiritual thing. It 
is independent of Matter, or Space, or 
Time. That which I love in my friend 
is not that which I see. What influences 
me in my friend is not his body but his 
spirit. It would have been an ineffable 
experience truly to have lived at that 
time— 


“ I think when I read the sweet story of old, 
How when Jesus was here among men, 



178 


THE CHANGED LIFE. 


awed, entranced, transfigured. To his 
mind it was impossible for any one to 
come under this influence and ever be 
the same again. “Whosoever abideth in 
Him sinneth ijot,” he said. It was in¬ 
conceivable that he should sin, as in¬ 
conceivable as that ice should live in a 
burning sun, or darkness coexist with 
noon. If any one did sin, it was to John 
the simple proof that he could never have 
met Christ. “Whosoever sinneth,” he 
exclaims, “hath not seen Him , neither 
known Him. ’ ’ Sin was abashed in this 
Presence. Its roots withered. Its sway 
and victory were for ever at an end. 

But these were His contemporaries. It 
was easy for them to be influenced by 
Him, for they were every day and all the 
day together. But how can we mirror 



THE ALCHEMY OF INFLUENCE. 179 


that which we have never seen? How 
can all this stupendous result be pro¬ 
duced by a Memory, by the scantiest of 
all Biographies, by One who lived and 
left this earth eighteen hundred years 
ago ? How can modern men to-day make 
Christ, the absent Christ, their most con¬ 
stant companion still? The answer is 
that Friendship is a spiritual thing. It 
is independent of Matter, or Space, or 
Time. That which I love in my friend 
is not that which I see. What influences 
me in my friend is not his body but his 
spirit. It would have been an ineffable 
experience truly to have lived at that 
time— 

“ I think when I read the sweet story of old, 
How when Jesus was here among men, 



i8o 


THE CHANGED LIFE. 


He took little children like lambs to His fold, 
I should like to have been with Him then. 

I wish that His hand had been laid on my head, 
That His arms had been thrown around me, 
And that I had seen His kind look when he said, 
* Let the little ones come unto me.’ ” 

And yet, if Christ were to come into the 
world again few of us probably would 
ever have a chance of seeing Him. Mil¬ 
lions of her subjects, in this little coun¬ 
try, have never seen their own Queen. 
And there would be millions of the sub¬ 
jects of Christ who could never get with¬ 
in speaking distance of Him if He were 
here. Our companionship with Him, 
like all true companionship, is a spiritual 
communion. All friendship, all love, 
human and Divine,, is purely spiritual. 



THE ALCHEMY OF INFLUENCE. l8l 


It was after He was risen that He in¬ 
fluenced even the disciples most. Hence 
in reflecting the character of Christ, it is 
no real obstacle that we may never have 
been in visible contact with Himself. 

There lived once a young girl whose 
perfect grace of character was the wonder 
of* those who knew her. She wore on 
her neck a gold locket which no one was 
ever allowed to open. One day, in a mo¬ 
ment of unusual confidence, one of her 
companions was allowed to touch its 
spring and learn its secret. She saw 
written these words—“ Whom having not 
seen , I love.” That was the secret of her 
beautiful life. She had been changed 
into the Same Image. 

Now this is not imitation, but a much 
deeper thing. Mark this distinction. 



i 82 


THE CHANGED LIFE. 


For the difference in the process, as well 
as in the result, may be as great as that 
between a photograph secured by the 
infallible pencil of the sun, and the rude 
outline from a school-boy’s chalk. Imi¬ 
tation is mechanical, reflection organic. 
The one is occasional, the other habitual. 
In the one case, man comes to God and 
imitates Him ; in the other, God comes 
to man and imprints Himself upon Him. 
It is quite true that there is an imitation 
of Christ which amounts to reflection. 
But Paul’s term includes all that the 
other holds, and is open to no mistake. 

“Make Christ your most constant 
companion”—this is what it practically 
means for us. Be more under His in¬ 
fluence than under any other influence. 
Ten minutes spent in His society every 



THE ALCHEMY OF INFLUENCE. 183 


day, ay, two minutes if it be face to 
face, and heart to heart, will make the 
whole day different. Every character 
has an inward spring, let Christ be it. 
Every action has a key-note, let Christ 
set it. Yesterday you got a certain let¬ 
ter. You sat down and wrote a reply 
which almost scorched the paper. You 
picked the cruellest adjectives you knew 
and sent it forth, without a pang, to do 
its ruthless work. You did that because 
your life was set- in the wrong key. 
You began the day with the mirror 
placed at the wrong angle. To-morrow, 
at day-break, turn it towards Him, and 
even to your enemy the fashion of your 
countenance will be changed. What¬ 
ever you then do, one thing you will 
find you could not do—you could not 



i86 


THE CHANGED LIFE. 


u Christian experience ’ ’ to ensure the 
same result again. What you are con¬ 
scious of is “the glory of the Lord.” 
And what the world is conscious of, if 
the result be a true one, is also ‘ ‘ the 
glory of the Lord.” In looking at a 
mirror one does not see the mirror, or 
think of it, but only of what it reflects. 
For a mirror never calls attention to 
itself—except when there are flaws in it. 

That this is a real experience and not 
a vision, that this life is possible to 
men, is being lived by men to-day, is 
simple biographical fact. From a thou¬ 
sand witnesses I cannot forbear to sum¬ 
mon one. The following are the words 
of one of the highest intellects this age 
has known, a man who shared the bur¬ 
dens of his country as few have done, 



the alchemy oe influence. 187 


and who, not in the shadows of old age, 
but in the high noon of his success, 
gave this confession—I quote it with 
only a few abridgments—to the world: 

u I want to speak to-night only a little, 
but that little I desire to speak of the 
sacred name of Christ, who is my life, 
my inspiration, my hope, and my surety. 
I cannot help stopping and looking back 
upon the past. And I wish, as if I had 
never done it before, to bear witness, not 
only that it is by the grace of God, but 
that it is by the grace of God as mani¬ 
fested in Christ Jesus, that I am what I 
am. I recognize the sublimity and grand¬ 
eur of the revelation of God in His eter¬ 
nal fatherhood as one that made the heav¬ 
ens, that founded the earth, and that re- 



i88 


THE CHANGED LIFE. 


gards all the tribes of the earth, compre¬ 
hending them in one universal mercy; 
but it is the God that is manifested in 
Jesus Christ, revealed by His life, made 
known by the inflections of His feelings, 
by His discourse, and by His deeds—it is 
that God that I desire to confess to-night, 
and of whom I desire to say, 4 By the 
love of God in Christ Jesus I am what I 
am. ’ * 

“If you ask me precisely what I mean 
by that, I say, frankly, that more than 
any recognized influence of my father or 
my mother upon me; more than the 
social influence of all the members of my 
father’s household; more, so far as I can 
trace it, or so far as I am made aware of 
it, than all the social influences of every 
kind, Christ has had the formation of my 



THE ALCHEMY OF INFLUENCE. 189 


mind and my disposition. My hidden 
ideals of what is beautiful I have drawn 
from Christ. My thoughts of what is 
manly, and noble, and pure, have almost 
all of them arisen from the Lord Jesus 
Christ. Many men have educated them¬ 
selves by reading Plutarch’s Lives of the 
Ancient Worthies, and setting before 
themselves one and another of these 
that in different ages have achieved 
celebrity; and they have recognized 
the great power of these men on them¬ 
selves. Now I do not perceive that poet, 
or philosopher, or reformer, or general, 
or any other great man, ever has dwelt 
in my imagination and in my thought 
as the simple Jesus has. For more than 
twenty-five years I instinctively have 
gone to Christ to draw a measure and a 




190 


THE CHANGED LIFE. 


rule for everything. Whenever there has 
been a necessity for it, I have sought— 
and at last almost spontaneously—to 
throw myself into the companionship 
of Christ; and early, by my imagination, 
I could see Him standing and looking 
quietly and lovingly upon" me. There 
seemed almost to drop from His face an 
influence upon me that suggested what 
was the right thing in the controlling 
of passion, in the subduing of pride, 
in the overcoming of selfishness; and 
it is from Christ, manifested to my in¬ 
ward eye, that I have consciously derived 
more ideals, more models, more influ¬ 
ences, than from any human character 
whatever. 

4 4 That is not all. I feel conscious that 
I have derived from the L,ord Jesus Christ 



THE ALCHEMY OF INFLUENCE. 191 


every thought that makes heaven a real¬ 
ity to me, and every thought that paves 
the road that lies between me and heaven. 
All my conceptions of the progress of 
grace in the soul; all the steps by which 
divine life is evolved; all the ideals that 
overhang the blessed sphere which awaits 
us beyond this world—these are derived 
from the Saviour. The life that I now 
live in the flesh I live by the faith of the 
Son of God. 

1 ‘ That is not all. Much as my future 
includes all these elements which go to 
make the blessed fabric of earthly life, 
yet, after all, what the summer is com¬ 
pared with all its earthly products— 
flowers, and leaves, and grass—that is 
Christ compared with all the products of 
Christ in my mind and in my soul. All 



192 


THE CHANGED LIFE. 


the flowers and leaves of sympathy; all 
the twining joys that come from my heart 
as a Christian—these I take and hold in 
the future, but they are to me what the 
flowers and leaves of summer are com¬ 
pared with the sun that makes the sum¬ 
mer. Christ is the Alpha and Omega, 
the beginning and the end of my better 
life. 

“When I read the Bible, I gather a 
great deal from the Old Testament, and 
from the Pauline portions of the New 
Testament; but after all, I am conscious 
that the fruit of the Bible is Christ. 
That is what I read it for, and that is 
what I find that is worth reading. I 
have had a hunger to be loved of Christ. 
You all know, in some relations, what 
it is to be hungry for love. Your heart 



THE ALCHEMY OF INFLUENCE. 193 


seems unsatisfied till you can draw some¬ 
thing more toward you from those that 
are dearest to you. There have been 
times when I have had an unspeakable 
heart-hunger for Christ’s love. My sense 
of sin is never strong when I think of 
thelawj'njy sense of sin is strong whenf 
I think of love—if there is any difference 
between law and love. It is when draw¬ 
ing near the L,ord Jesus Christ, and long¬ 
ing to be loved, that I have the most 
vivid sense of unsymmetry, of imperfec¬ 
tion, of absolute unworthiness, and of 
my sinfulness. Character and conduct 
are never so vividly set before me as 
when in silence I bend in the presence 
of Christ, revealed not in wrath, but in 
love to me. I never so much long to 

be lovely, that I may be loved, as when 
13 





194 


THE CHANGED LIFE. 


I have this revelation of Christ before my 
mind. 

“ In looking back upon my experience, 
that part of my life which stands out, 
and which I remember most vividly, is 
just that part that has had some con¬ 
scious association with Christ. All the 
rest is pale, and thin, and lies like clouds 
on the horizon. Doctrines, systems, 
measures, methods—what may be called 
the necessary mechanical and external 
part of worship; the part which the 
senses would recognize—this seems to 
have withered and fallen off like leaves 
of last summer; but that part which has 
taken hold of Christ abides,’ ’ 

Can any one hear this life-music, with 
its throbbing refrain of Christ, and re- 




THE ALCHEMY OF INFLUENCE. 1 95 


main unmoved by envy or desire? Yet, 
till we have lived like this we have never 
lived at all. 



V 




THE FIRST EXPERIMENT. 


''p'HEN you reduce religion to a com¬ 
mon Friendship ? A common 
Friendship—Who talks of a common 
Friendship ! There is no such thing in 
the world. On earth no word is more 
sublime. Friendship is the nearest thing 
we know to what religion is. God is 
love. And to make religion akin to 
Friendship is simply to give it the high¬ 
est expression conceivable by man. But 
if by demurring to “a common friend¬ 
ship” is meant a protest against the 
greatest and the holiest in religion be- 

196 





THE FIRST EXPERIMENT. 197 

ing spoken of in intelligible terms, then 
I am afraid the objection is all too real. 
Men always look for a mystery when 
one talks of sanctification; some mys¬ 
tery apart from that which must ever 
be mysterious wherever Spirit works. 
It is thought some peculiar secret lies 
behind it, some occult experience which 
only the initiated know. Thousands of 
persons go to church every Sunday hop¬ 
ing to solve this mystery. At meetings, 
at conferences, many a time they have 
reached what they thought was the very 
brink of it, but somehow no further 
revelation came. Poring over religious 
books, how often were they not within 
a paragraph of it; the next page, the 
next sentence, would discover all, and 
they would be borne on a flowing tide 




198 


THE CHANGED IJFE. 


for ever. But nothing happened. The 
next sentence and the next page were 
read, and still it eluded them; and 
though the promise of its coming kept 
faithfully up to the end, the last chapter 
found them still pursuing. Why did 
nothing happen ? Because there was 
nothing to happen—nothing of the kind 
they were looking for. Why did it elude 
them? Because there was no “it.” 
When shall we learn that the pursuit 
of holiness is simply the pursuit of 
Christ? When shall we substitute for 
the “it” of a fictitious aspiration, the 
approach to a Living Friend? Sanctity 
is in character and not in moods; Divin¬ 
ity in our own plain calm humanity, and 
in no mystic rapture of the soul. 

And yet there are others who, for ex- 



THE FIRST EXPERIMENT. 199 


actly a contrary reason, will find scant 
satisfaction here. Their complaint is 
not that a religion expressed in terms of 
Friendship is too homely, but that it is 
still too mystical. To ‘ ‘ abide ’ ’ in Christ, 
to “make Christ our most constant com¬ 
panion, ” is to them the purest mysticism. 
They want something absolutely tangible 
and absolutely direct. These are not the 
poetical souls who seek a sign, a mysti¬ 
cism in excess; but the prosaic natures 
whose want is mathematical definition 
in details. Yet it is perhaps not possible 
to reduce this problem to much more 
rigid elements. The beauty of Friend¬ 
ship is its infinity. One can never evac¬ 
uate life of mysticism. Home is full of 
it, love is full of it, religion is full of it. 
Why stumble at that in the relation of 




200 


THE CHANGED LIFE. 


man to Christ which is natural in the 
relation of man to man ? 

If any one cannot conceive or realize a 
mystical relation with Christ, perhaps all 
that can be done is to help him to step 
on to it by still plainer analogies from 
common life. How do I know Shake¬ 
speare or Dante? By communing with 
their words and thoughts. Many men 
know Dante better than their own fathers. 
He influences them more. As a spiritual 
presence he is more near to them, as a 
spiritual force more real. Is there any 
reason why a greater than Shakespeare 
or Dante, who also walked this earth, 
who left great words behind Him, who 
has great works everywhere in the world 
now, should not also instruct, inspire, and 
mould the characters of men? I do not 



THE FIRST EXPERIMENT. 


201 


limit Christ’s influence to this. It is this, 
and it is more. But Christ, so far from 
resenting or discouraging this relation of 
Friendship, Himself proposed it. “Abide 
in Me ’ ’ was almost His last word to the 
world. And He partly met the difficulty 
of those who feel its intangibleness by 
adding the practical clause, “If ye abide 
in Me and My words abide in you." 

Begin with His words. Words can 
scarcely ever be long impersonal. Christ 
Himself was a Word, a word made Flesh. 
Make His words flesh; do them, live 
them, and you must live Christ. “ He 
that keepeih My commandments , he it is 
that loveth Me.” Obey Him and you — 
must love Him. Abide in Him and you 
must obey Him. Cultivate His Friend¬ 
ship. Live after Christ, in His Spirit, 



202 


THE CHANGED LIFE. 


as in His Presence, and it is difficult 
to think what more you can do. Take 
this at least as a first lesson, as introduc¬ 
tion. If you cannot at once and always 
feel the play of His life upon yours, watch 
for it also indirectly. ‘ ‘ The whole earth 
is full of the character of the Lord.” 
Christ is the Light of the world, and 
much of His Light is reflected from 
things in the world—even from clouds. 
Sunlight is stored in every leaf, from 
leaf through coal, and it comforts us 
thence when days are dark and we can¬ 
not see the sun. Christ shines through 
men, through books, through history, 
through nature, music, art. Look for 
Him there. “Every day one should 
either look at a beautiful picture, or 
hear beautiful music, or read a beautiful 



THE FIRST EXPERIMENT. 203 


poem.” The real danger of mysticism 
is not making it broad enough. 

Do not think that nothing is happen¬ 
ing because you do not see yourself grow, 
or hear the whirr of the machinery. All 
great things grow noiselessly. You can 
see a mushroom grow, but never a child. 
Mr. Darwin tells us that Evolution pro¬ 
ceeds by “numerous, successive, and' 
slight modifications. ’ ’ Paul knew that, 
and put it, only in more beautiful words, 
into the heart of his formula. He said 
for the comforting of all slowly perfect¬ 
ing souls that they grew ( ‘ from character 
to character.” “The inward man,” he 
says elsewhere, “is renewed from day to 
day.” All thorough work is slow; all 
true development by minute, slight, and 
insensible metamorphoses. The higher 



204 


THE CHANGED LIFE. 


the structure, moreover, the slower the 
progress. As the biologist runs his eye 
over the long Ascent of Life he sees the 
lowest forms of animals develop in an 
hour; the next above these reach matur¬ 
ity in a day ; those higher still take weeks 
or months to perfect; but the few at the 
top demand the long experiment of years. 
If a child and an ape are born on the same 
day, the last will be in full possession of 
its faculties and doing the active work of 
life before the child has left its cradle. 
Life is the cradle of eternity. As the 
man is to the animal in the slowness of 
his evolution, so is the spiritual man to 
the natural man. Foundations which 
have to bear the weight of an eternal 
life must be surely laid. Character is 
to wear for ever; who will wonder or 





THE FIRST EXPERIMENT. 205 


grudge that it cannot be developed in 
a day? 

To await the growing of a soul, nev¬ 
ertheless, is an almost Divine act of 
faith. How pardonable, surely, the im¬ 
patience of deformity with itself, of a 
consciously despicable character standing 
before Christ, wondering, yearning, hun¬ 
gering to be like that? Yet must one 
trust the process fearlessly, and without 
misgiving. “The Lord the Spirit” will 
do His part. The tempting expedient 
is, in haste for abrupt or visible progress, 
to try some method less spiritual, or to 
defeat the end by watching for effects 
instead of keeping the eye on the Cause. 
A photograph prints from the negative 
only while exposed to the sun. While 
the artist is looking to see how it is 



206 


THE CHANGED LIFE. 


getting on lie simply stops the getting 
on. Whatever of wise supervision the 
soul may need, it is certain it can never 
be over-exposed, or that, being exposed, 
anything else in the world can improve 
the result or quicken it. The creation 
of a new heart, the renewing of a right 
spirit, is an omnipotent work of God. 
Leave it to the Creator. ‘ ( He which 
hath begun a good work in you will 
perfect it unto that day.” 

No man, nevertheless, who feels the 
worth and solemnity of what is at stake 
will be careless as to his progress. To 
become like Christ is the only thing in 
the world worth caring for, the thing 
before which every ambition of mail is 
folly, and all lower achievement vain. 
Those only who make this quest the 



THE FIRST EXPERIMENT. 2QJ 


supreme desire and passion of their lives 
can even begin to hope to reach it. If, 
therefore, it has seemed up to this point 
as if all depended on passivity, let me 
now assert, with conviction more intense, 
that all depends on activity. A religion 
of effortless adoration may be a religion 
for an angel, but never for a man. Not 
in „ the contemplative, but in the active, 
lies true hope; not in rapture, but in 
reality, lies true life; not in the realm 
of ideals, but among tangible things, is 
man’s sanctification wrought. Resolu¬ 
tion, effort, pain, self-crucifixion, agony 
—all the things already dismissed as 
futile in themselves must now be restored 
to office, and a tenfold responsibility laid 
upon them. For what is their office? 
Nothing less than to move the vast in- 



208 


THE CHANGED LIFE. 


ertia of the soul, and place it, and keep 
it where the spiritual forces will act 
upon it. It is to rally the forces of the 
will, and keep the surface of the mirror 
bright and ever in position. It is to 
uncover the face which is to look at 
Christ, and draw down the veil when 
unhallowed sights are near. You have, 
perhaps, gone with an astronomer to 
watch him photograph the spectrum of 
a star. As you entered the dark vault 
of the observatory you saw him begin 
by lighting a candle. To see the star 
with? No; but to see to adjust the 
instrument to see the star with. It was 
the star that was going to take the 
photograph ; it was, also, the astronomer. 
For a long time he worked in the dim¬ 
ness, screwing tubes and polishing lenses 



THE FIRST EXPERIMENT. 209 


and adjusting reflectors, and only after 
much labor the finely focussed instru¬ 
ment was brought to bear. Then he 
blew out the light, and left the star to 
do its work upon the plate alone. The 
day’s task for the Christian is to bring 
his instrument to liear. Having done 
that he may blow out his candle. All 
the evidences of Christianity which have 
brought him there, all aids to Faith, all 
acts of worship, all the leverages of the 
Church, all Prayer and Meditation, all 
girding of the Will—these lesser pro¬ 
cesses, these candle-light activities for 
that supreme hour, may be set aside. 
But, remember, it is but for an hour. 
The wise man will be he who quickest 
lights his candle; the wisest he who 
never lets it out. To-morrow, the next 

14 



210 


THE CHANGED LIFE. 


moment, he, a poor, darkened, blurred 
soul, may need it again to focus the 
Image better, to take a mote off the 
lens, to clear the mirror from a breath 
with which the world has dulled it. 

No readjustment is ever required on 
behalf of the Star. That is one great 
fixed point in this shifting universe. But 
the world moves . And each day, each 
hour, demands a further motion and read¬ 
justment for the soul. A telescope in an 
observatory follows a star by clockwork, 
but the clockwork of the soul is called 
the Will. Hence, while the soul in pas¬ 
sivity reflects the Image of the Lord, the 
Will in intense activity holds the mirror 
in position lest the drifting motion of the 
world bear it beyond the line of vision. 
To “follow Christ” is largely to keep 



THE FIRST EXPERIMENT. 


211 


the soul in such position as will allow 
for the motion of the earth. And this 
calculated counteracting of the move¬ 
ments of a world, this holding of the 
mirror exactly opposite to the Mirrored, 
this steadying of the faculties unerringly 
through cloud and earthquake, fire and 
sword, is the stupendous co-operating 
labor of the Will. It is all man’s 
work. It is all Christ’s work. In prac¬ 
tice it is both; in theory it is both. 
But the wise man will say in practice, 
“It depends upon myself.” 

In the Galerie des Beaux Arts in Paris 
there stands a famous statue. It was the 
last work of a great genius, who, like 
many a genius, was very poor and lived 
in a garret, which served as studio and 
sleeping-room alike. When the statue 



212 


THE CHANGED El EE. 


was all but finished, one midnight a 
sudden frost fell upon Paris. The 
sculptor lay awake in the fireless room and 
thought of the still moist clay, thought 
how the water would freeze in the pores 
and destroy in an hour the dream of 
his life. So the old man rose from his 
couch and heaped the bed-clothes rever¬ 
ently round his work. In the morning 
when the neighbors entered the room 
the sculptor was dead. But the statue 
lived. 

The Image of Christ that is forming 
within us—that is life’s one charge. Let 
every project stand aside for that. “Till 
Christ be formed,” no man’s work is fin¬ 
ished, no religion crowned, no life has 
fulfilled its end. Is the infinite task be¬ 
gun ? When, how, are we to be differ- 



THE FIRST EXPERIMENT. 


213 


ent ? Time cannot change men. Death 
cannot change men. Christ can. Where¬ 
fore put on Christ . 














“FIRST!” 


A Talk with Boys. 





INTRODUCTORY. 


/^\NK Sunday afternoon there assem¬ 
bled at the City Hall, Glasgow, 
Scotland, the Boy’s Brigade, fourteen 
hundred strong, in the presence of an in¬ 
terested audience. Professor Drummond 
ascended the platform, and after prayer 
had been offered, and several hymns had 
been sung, requested the members to 
turn to the sixth chapter of St. Matthew 
and read in unison the verse, “But seek 

ye first the kingdom of God, and His 

217 



2 i8 


INTRODUCTORY. 


righteousness, and all these things shall 
be added unto you.” Afterwards, all 
being seated, Professor Drummond pro¬ 
ceeded with his address. 





“FIRST!” 


^ HAVE three heads to give you. The 
first is “Geography,’* the second is 
44 Arithmetic,” and the third is “Gram¬ 
mar.” 

Geography. 

First. Geography tells us where to 
find places. Where is the kingdom of 
God? It is said that when a Prussian 
officer was killed in the Franco-Prussian 
war, a map of France was very often 
found in his pocket. When we wish to 
occupy a country, we ought to know its 

219 





220 


“ FIRST !” 


geography. Now, where is the kingdom 
of God ? A boy over there says, “It is 
in heaven. No; it is not in heaven. 
Another boy says, “It is in the Bible.” 
No ; it is not in the Bible. Another boy 
says, “It must be in the Church.” No; 
it is not in the Church. Heaven is only 
the capital of the kingdom of God; the 
Bible is the Guide-book to it; the Church 
is the weekly Parade of those who belong 
to it. If you would turn to the seven¬ 
teenth chapter of St. Iyuke you will find 
out where the kingdom of God really is. 
“ The kingdom of God is within you ”— 
within you. The kingdom of God is 
inside people. 

I remember once taking a walk by the 
river near where the Falls of Niagara 
are, and I noticed a remarkable figure 



GEOGRAPHY. 


221 


walking along the river bank. I had 
been some time in America. I had seen 
black men, and red men, and yellow 
men, and white men; black men, the Ne¬ 
groes; red men, the Indians; yellow men, 
the Chinese; white men, the Americans. 
But this man looked quite different in his 
dress from anything I had ever seen. 
When he came a little closer, I saw he 
was wearing a kilt; when he came a little 
nearer still, I saw that he was dressed 
exactly like a Highland soldier. When 
he came quite near, I said to him, “What 
are you doing here?” “Why should I 
not be here?” he said. “Don’t you know 
this is British soil ? When you cross the 
river you come into Canada.” This sol¬ 
dier was thousands of miles from Eng¬ 
land, and yet he was in the kingdom of 



222 


“ FIRST !” 


England. Wherever there is an Eng¬ 
lish heart beating loyal to the Queen of 
Britain, there is England. Wherever 
there is a boy whose heart is loyal to the 
King of the kingdom of God, the king¬ 
dom of God is within him. 

What is the kingdom of God ? Every 
kingdom has its exports, its products. 
Go down to the river here, and you 
will find ships coming in with cotton; 
you know they come from America. 
You will find ships with tea; you know 
they are from China. Ships with wool; 
you know they come from Australia. 
Ships with sugar; you know they come 
from Java. What comes from the king¬ 
dom of God? Again we must refer to our 
Guide-book. Turn to Romans, and we 
shall find what the kingdom of God is. 



GEOGRAPHY. 


223 


I will read it: “The kingdom of God 
is righteousness, peace, joy”—three 
things. ‘ 1 The kingdom of God is right¬ 
eousness, peace, joy.” Righteousness, 
of course, is just doing what is right. 
Any boy who does what is right has 
the kingdom of God within him. Any 
boy who, instead of being quarrelsome, 
lives at peace with the other boys, has 
the kingdom of God within him. Any 
boy whose heart is filled with joy be¬ 
cause he does what is right, has the 
kingdom of God within him. The 
kingdom of God is not going to relig¬ 
ious meetings, and hearing strange relig¬ 
ious experiences: the kingdom of God 
is doing what is right—living at peace 
with all men, being filled with joy in 
the Holy Ghost. 



224 


“ FIRST !” 


Boys, if you are going to be Chris¬ 
tians, be Christians as boys, and not as 
your grandmothers. A grandmother has 
to be a Christian as a grandmother, and 
that is the right and the beautiful thing 
for her; but if you cannot read your 
Bible by the hour as your grandmother 
can, or delight in meetings as she can, 
don’t think you are necessarily a bad 
boy. When you are your grandmother’s 
age you will have your grandmother’s 
kind of religion. Meantime, be a Chris¬ 
tian as a boy. Dive a boy’s life. Do 
the straight thing; seek the kingdom 
of righteousness and honor and truth. 
Keep the peace with the boys about you, 
and be filled with the joy of being a 
loyal, and simple, and natural, and boy¬ 
like servant of Christ. 



GEOGRAPHY. 


225 


You can very easily tell a house, or 
a workshop, or an office where the king¬ 
dom of God is not . The first thing you 
see in that place is that the “straight 
thing” is not always done. Customers 
do not get fair play. You are in danger 
of learning to cheat.and to lie. Better, 
a thousand times, to starve than to stay 
in a place where you cannot do what is 
right. 

Or, when you go into your workshop, 
you find everybody sulky, touchy, and ill- 
tempered ; everybody at daggers’ drawn 
with everybody else; some of the men 
not on speaking terms with some of the 
others, and the whole feel of the place 
miserable and unhappy. The kingdom 
of God is not there, for it is peace. It is 


15 



226 


“ FIRST !” 


the kingdom of the Devil that is anger 
and wrath and malice. 

If you want to get the kingdom of God 
into your workshop, or into your home, 
let the quarrelling be stopped. Live in 
peace and harmony and brotherliness 
with every one. For the kingdom of 
God is a kingdom of brothers. It is a 
great society, founded by Jesus Christ, 
of all the people who try to be like Him, 
and live to make the world better and 
sweeter and happier. Wherever a boy is 
trying to do that, in the house or in the 
street, in the workshop or on the baseball 
field, there is the kingdom of God. And 
every boy, however small or obscure or 
poor, who is seeking that, is a member 
of it. You see now, I hope, what the 
kingdom is. 



arithmetic. 


227 


Arithmetic. 

I pass, therefore, to the second head: 
What was it ? “ Arithmetic. ’ ’ Are there 
any arithmetic words in this text? “Add¬ 
ed,’’ says one boy. Quite right, added. 
What other arithmetic word? “First.” 
Yes, first — ‘ ‘ first, ” “ added. ’ ’ Now, don’t 
you think you could not have anything 
better to seek “ first ’ ’ than the things I 
have named—to do what is right, to live 
at peace, and be always making those 
about you happy ? You see at once why 
Christ tells us to seek these things first 
—because they are the best worth seek¬ 
ing. Do you know anything better than 
these three things, anything happier, 
purer, nobler? If you do, seek them 
first. But if you do not, seek first the 



228 


“ FIRST !” 


kingdom of God. I am not here this 
afternoon to tell you to be religious. You 
know that. I am not here to tell you to 
seek the kingdom of God. I have come 
to tell you to seek the kingdom of God 
first. First. Not many people do that. 
They put a little religion into their life 
—once a week, perhaps. They might 
just as well let it alone. It is not worth 
seeking the kingdom of God unless we 
seek it first. Suppose you take the helm 
out of a ship and hang it over the bow, 
and send that ship to sea, will it ever 
reach the other side ? Certainly not. 
It will drift about anyhow. Keep religion 
in its place, and it will take you straight 
through life, and straight to your Father 
in heaven when life is over. But if you 
do not put it in its place, you may just 



arithmetic. 


229 


as well have nothing to do with it. Re¬ 
ligion out of its place in a human life is 
the most miserable thing in the world. 
There is nothing that requires so much 
to be kept in its place as religion, and its 
place is what ? second ? third ? 11 First. ’ ’ 

Boys, carry that home with you to-day— 
first the kingdom of God. Make it so 
that it will be natural to you to think 
about that the very first thing. 

There was a boy in Glasgow appren¬ 
ticed to a gentleman who made tele¬ 
graphs. The gentleman told me this 
himself. One day this boy was up on 
the top of a four-story house with a 
number of men fixing up a telegraph- 
wire. The work was all but done. It 
was getting late, and the men said they 
were going away home, and the boy was 



230 


“ FIRST !” 


to nip off the ends of the wire himself. 
Before going down they told him to be 
sure to go back to the workshop, when 
he was finished, with his master’s tools. 
“Do not leave any of them lying about, 
whatever you do,” said the foreman. 
The boy climbed up the pole and began 
to nip off the ends of the wire. It was 
a very cold winter night, and the dusk 
was gathering. He lost his hold and fell 
upon the slates, slid down, and then 
over and over to the ground below. 
A clothes-rope, stretched across the 
“green” on to which he was just about 
to fall, caught him on the chest and 
broke his fall; but the shock was terri¬ 
ble, and he lay unconscious among some 
clothes upon the green. An old woman 
came out; seeing her rope broken and 




arithmetic. 


231 


the clothes all soiled, thought the boy 
was drunk, shook him, scolded him, and 
went for the policeman. And the boy 
with the shaking came back to conscious¬ 
ness, rubbed his eyes, and got upon his 
feet. What do you think he did? He 
staggered, half blind, away up the stairs. 
He climbed the ladder. He got on to 
the roof of the house. He gathered up 
his tools, put them into his basket, took 
them down, and when he got to the 
ground again, fainted dead away. Just 
then the policeman came, saw there was 
something seriously wrong, and carried 
him away to the hospital, where he lay 
for some time. I am glad to say he got 
better. What was his first thought at 
that terrible moment? His duty. He 
was not thinking of himself; he was 



232 


1 ‘ FIRST !” 


thinking about his master. First, the 
kingdom of God. 

But there is another arithmetic word. 
What is it? “Added.” There is not 
one boy here who does not know the dif¬ 
ference between addition and subtraction . 
Now, that is a very important difference 
in religion, because—and it is a very 
strange thing—very few people know 
the difference when they begin to talk 
about religion. They often tell boys that 
if they seek the kingdom of God, every¬ 
thing else is going to be subtracted from 
them. They tell them that they are 
going to become gloomy, miserable, and 
will lose everything that makes a boy’s 
life worth living—that they will have to 
stop baseball and story-books, and be¬ 
come little old men, and spend all their 



arithmetic. 


233 


time in going to meetings and in singing 
hymns. Now, that is not true. Christ 
never said anything like that. Christ says 
we are to ‘ 1 seek first the kingdom of God, ’ ’ 
and everything else worth having is to be 
added unto us. If there is anything I would 
like you to take away with you this after¬ 
noon, it is these two arithmetic words— 
“first” and “added.” I do not mean 
by added that if you become religious 
you are all going to become rich. Here 
is a boy, who, in sweeping out the shop 
to-morrow morning, finds sixpence lying 
among the orange-boxes. Well, nobody 
has missed it. He puts it in his pocket, 
and it begins to burn a hole there. By 
breakfast-time he wishes that sixpence 
were in his master’s pocket. And by 
and by he goes to his master. He says 



234 


“ FIRST !” 


(to himself, and not to his master), “ I was 
at the Boys’ Brigade yesterday, and I was 
to seek first that which was right. ’ ’ Then 
he says to his master, “ Please, sir, here 
is sixpence that I found upon the floor.” 
The master puts it in the “till.” What 
has the boy got in his pocket? Nothing; 
hut he has got the kingdom of God in his 
heart . He has laid up treasure in heaven, 
which is of infinitely more worth than six¬ 
pence. Now, that boy does not find a 
shilling on his way home. I have known 
that happen, but that is not what is meant 
by “adding.” It does not mean that God 
is going to pay him in his own coin, for 
He pays in better coin. 

Yet I remember once hearing of a boy 
who was paid in both ways. He was 
very, very poor. He lived in a foreign 



arithmetic. 


235 


country, and his mother said to him one 
day that he must go into the great city 
and start in business, and she took his 
coat and cut it open and sewed between 
the lining and the coat forty golden 
dinars, which she had saved up for many 
years to start him in life. She told him 
to take care of robbers as he went across 
the desert; and as he was going out of 
the door she said : ‘ ‘ My boy, I have only 
two words for you—‘ Fear God, and never 
tell a lie.’ ” The boy started off, and 
toward evening he saw glittering in the 
distance the minarets of the great city, 
but between the city and himself he saw 
a cloud of dust, it came nearer; presently 
he saw that it was a band of robbers. 
One of the robbers left the rest and rode 
toward him, and said : “Boy, what have 



2 36 


“ FIRST !” 


you got?” And the boy looked him in 
the face and said: “I have forty golden 
dinars sewed up in my coat.” And the 
robber laughed and wheeled round his 
horse and went away back. He would 
not believe the boy. Presently another 
robber came, and he said: 1 ‘ Boy, what 
have you got?” “Forty golden dinars 
sewed up in my coat.” “The robber 
said: “The boy is a fool,” and wheeled 
his horse and rode away back. By and 
by the robber captain came, and he said: 
“Boy, what have you got?” “I have 
forty golden dinars sewed up in my coat.” 
And the robber dismounted and put his 
hand over the boy’s breast, felt some¬ 
thing round, counted one, two, three, 
four, five, till he counted out the forty 
golden coins. He looked the boy in the 



arithmetic. 


237 


face, and said: 11 Why did you tell me 
that?” The boy said : “ Because of God 
and my mother. ’ ’ And the robber leaned 
on his spear and thought, and said: 
“Wait a moment.” He mounted his 
horse, rode back to the rest of the rob¬ 
bers, and came back in about five min¬ 
utes with his dress changed. This time 
he looked not like a robber, but like a 
merchant. He took the boy up on his 
horse and said: “My boy, I have long 
wanted to do something for my God and 
for my mother, and I have this moment 
renounced my robber’s life. I am also 
a merchant. I have a large business 
house in the city. I want you to come 
and live with me, to teach me about your 
God; and you will be rich, and your 
mother some day will come and live with 



23B 


“first I” 


us.“ And it all happened. By seeking 
first the kingdom of God, all these things 
were added unto him. 

Boys, banish for ever from your minds 
the idea that religion is subtraction. It 
does not tell us to give things up, but 
rather gives us something so much bet¬ 
ter that they give themselves up. When 
you see a boy on the street whipping a 
top, you know, perhaps, that you could 
not make that boy happier than by giv¬ 
ing him a top, a whip, and half an hour 
to whip it. But next birthday, when he 
looks back, he says, “What a goose I 
was last year to be delighted with a 
top; what I want now is a baseball bat.” 
Then when he becomes an old man he 
does not care in the least for a baseball 
bat; he wants rest, and a snug fireside, 



arithmetic. 


239 


and a newspaper every day. He won¬ 
ders how he could ever have taken up 
his thoughts with baseball bats and 
whipping-tops. Now, when a boy be¬ 
comes a Christian, he grows out of the 
evil things one by one—that is to say, 
if they are really evil—which he used 
to set his heart upon (of course I do 
not mean baseball bats, for they are 
not evils); and so instead of telling 
people to give up things, we are safer 
to tell them to “seek first the kingdom 
of God,” and then they will get new 
things and better things, and the old 
things will drop off of themselves. This 
is what is meant by the “new heart.” 
It means that God puts into us new 
thoughts and new wishes, and we be¬ 
come quite different boys. 



240 


“ FIRST !” 


Grammar. 

lastly, and very shortly. What was 
the third head? “ Grammar.” Right: 
Grammar. Now, I require a clever boy 
to answer the next question. What is 
the verb? “Seek.” Very good: 
“Seek.” What mood is it in? “Im¬ 
perative mood.” What does that mean? 
“Command.” You boys of the Boys’ 
Brigade know what commands are. 
What is the soldier’s first lesson? 
“Obedience.” Have you obeyed this 
command ? Remember the imperative 
mood of these words, “ Seek first the 
kingdom of God.” This is the com¬ 
mand of your King. It must be' done. 
I have been trying to show you what a 
splendid thing it is; what a reasonable 
thing it is; what a happy thing it is; 



GRAMMAR. 


241 


but beyond all these reasons it is a thing 
that must be done, because we are com¬ 
manded to do it by our Captain. It is 
one of the finest things about the Boys’ 
Brigade that it always appeals to Christ 
as its highest Officer, and takes its com¬ 
mands from Him. Now, there is His 
command to seek first the kingdom of 
God. Have you done it? “Well,” I 
know some boys will say, “we are 
going to have a good time, enjoy life, 
and then we are going to seek— last — 
the kingdom of God.” Now that is 
mean; it is nothing else than mean for 
a boy to take all the good gifts that 
God has given him, and then give Him 
nothing back in return but his wasted 
life. 

God wants boys’ lives, not only their 
16 



242 


44 FIRST !” 


souls. It is for active service soldiers are 
drilled and trained and fed and armed. 
That is why you and I are in the world at 
all—not to prepare to go out of it some 
day; but to serve God actively in it now. 
It is monstrous and shameful and cow¬ 
ardly to talk of seeking the kingdom last. 
It is shirking duty, abandoning one’s 
rightful post, playing into the enemy’s 
hand by doing nothing to turn his flank. 
Every hour a kingdom is coming in your 
heart, in your home, in the world near 
you, be it a kingdom of darkness or a 
kingdom of light You are placed 
where you are, in a particular business, 
in a particular street, to help on there the 
kingdom of God. You cannot do that 
when you are old and Teady to die. By 
that time your companions will have 



GRAMMAR. 


243 


fought their fight, and lost or won. If 
they lose, will you not be sorry that you 
did not help them? Will you not regret 
that only at the last you helped the king¬ 
dom of God? Perhaps you will not be 
able to do it then. And then your life 
has been lost indeed. 

Very few people have the opportunity 
to seek the kingdom of God at the end. 
Christ, knowing all that, knowing that 
religion was a thing for our life, not 
merely for our death-bed, has laid this 
command upon us now: u Seek first the 
kingdom of God.” I am going to leave 
you with this text itself. Every Brigade 
boy in the world should obey it. 

Boys, before you go to work to-morrow, 
before you go to sleep to-night, before 
you go to the Sunday-school this after- 



244 


“ FIRST !” 


noon, before you go out of the door of 
the City Hall, resolve that, God helping 
you, you are going to seek first the king¬ 
dom of God. Perhaps some boys here 
are deserters; they began once before to 
serve Christ, and they deserted. Come 
back again, come back again to-day. 
Others have never enlisted at all. Will 
you not do it now? You are old enough 
to decide. And the grandest moment of 
a boy’s life is that moment when he 
decides to 

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